Jesus, Mary, and Joseph: the first queer family? <\/p>\n
Such are the questions \u2013 transgressive, irreverent, maybe even a little shocking \u2013 provoked by the photography of JJ Levine. <\/p>\n
Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n The Montreal artist, whose portraiture toys with conventional ideas about gender and sexuality and familial bonds, is having a moment. His pieces have recently been acquired by major institutional collectors in Quebec and English Canada, while the National Gallery will feature his work in an upcoming show. Art fairs in New York and Toronto have been or will be wallpapered with Levines this year. <\/p>\n The artist is trans and his work has a particular relevance at a moment when trans people are under attack, after a period of progress and increased visibility. <\/p>\n But as the Biblical valence of some Levine images suggests, it is their timelessness, as much as their timeliness, that makes them stick in the viewer\u2019s mind. <\/p>\n Far from being mere political statements, his best photographs engage in a deep art-historical conversation going back to medieval Siena and reaching forward to New York\u2019s East Village in the 1980s. Immaculately composed (if not conceived), lushly coloured, and alternating between campy and austere, Levine\u2019s work makes a surprising bid for immortality. <\/p>\n The camera is Levine\u2019s first artistic love and primary implement. A Nan Goldin show at the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019art contemporain was a formative youthful experience. In some ways it\u2019s easiest to slot his work into the history of queer and outsider photography that Goldin represents, along with her contemporary and scene-mate Peter Hujar and later exemplars such as Catherine Opie. <\/p>\n