Activity Alone Time

JJ Levine has been photographing trans and queer communities since 2006. His portrait work includes personal and intimate series and others that challenge the way sexuality and the binary gender are played out in contemporary society.

Alone Time

Photography, 2007-2015

Alone Time is a series of brightly coloured photographs of couples sharing intimate interactions of domestic life; however, each “couple” proves to be a single model, appearing as both the male and female character in the same frame.

By demonstrating an individual body’s capacity to engagingly and believably embody two genders, my project questions the mainstream depiction of binary gender roles. This conceptual decision to double the gender presentation of a single body challenges normative ideas surrounding gender presentation and instead implies that gender expression can be fluid and multiple.

As well, through the technical aspects of my work, I challenge representational tropes: while the individual photographs are shot on slide film, scanned, layered, and digitally collaged to create the final illusion of “two people,” no aspect of the subjects’ genders are digitally altered – the images are successful because they are visually convincing without manipulation of the subjects’ body through means other than makeup, costume, and pose, further emphasizing the notion that gender is malleable.