JJ Levine is a photographer from Montreal whose work explores issues surrounding gender, sexuality, identity and queer space. Levine’s work uses photography to reject and rework traditional or normative gender masquerades. The photographs used to commentate on gender performance is striking and intriguing, leaving the observer captivated by the works ambiguity. Levine exposes the binary divide between masculinity and femininity as a social construction built on the binary opposition between men and women. Clues as to Levine’s subject’s gender are made indistinct throughout Levine’s work leaving the observer in charge of the way in which they choose to perceive the individual or the portrayed relationship; as homosexual, heterosexual or something entirely new.

Levine’s photo series titled “Switch” portrays a couple dressed and staged in both the masculine and feminine role. Even height is taken into account and played with as a mode to emulate masculinity.

Levine’s works expose the faults and limitations upheld by the traditional notions of gender. The dichotomies of heterosexual/homosexual, masculinity/ femininity are subverted and the hierarchies that have been placed on each opposition; heterosexuality as the norm and masculinity as the way in which gender is defined, are put into question. When these norms are stripped of their power, it then becomes possible to rework and redefine identity and sexuality, which Levine gives us through this photography. Levine refuses to view gender and sexuality categorically and instead understands them on a more fluid spectrum, opening up a new scope through which normative perspectives can be understood.

-MC

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