[Spring/Summer 2011]
Queers, media darlings, Aboriginals, female bodybuilders, and crack addicts form a highly heterogeneous portrait gallery that challenges our ideas about identity. These unsettling images reveal unexpected strengths or vulnerabilities, leading us to re-evaluate our perceptions.
JJ Levine, Queer Portraits
Levine offers a series of intimate, touching portraits of friends and close relations in the gay community. She thus offers a plural vision of homosexual identity by deconstructing stereotypes. In her other series, she cap- tures amusing, refreshing games featuring permutation of gender roles.
Tony Fouhse, USER Portraits of Crack Addicts
Fouhse photographs addicts in the street,
both day and night, in the Lowertown neigh- bourhood of Ottawa. His compositions, which range from natural documentary style to figures of the sublime and tragic, confer a lost dignity upon his subjects. This transfiguration, based on collaboration and trust, draws both respect and empathy from the viewer.
Martin Schoeller, Close Up, Female Bodybuilders
Schoeller has produced a series of close-up portraits that blend known and Aboriginal personalities. Printed in very large format and without touch-ups, these images mag- nify the faces’ particular beauty and flaws, enhancing their eloquence. In a recent series on female bodybuilders, he continues his research on the ambiguities of appearance.