"Montreal gay photographer feted with a major exhibit in Mexico City" by Matthew Hays, Xtra!, Montreal, 2010

Fans of Pierre Dalpé recognize one of his favourite and most fascinating points of obsession. The Montreal gay photographer's work often captures doubles, twins or siblings. His striking photographs have been enhanced by the onset of digital photography, which allows for the easily manipulated creation of visual illusions, ultimately prompting the question: is that a real set of twins or one model posing twice?

Dalpé has specialized in spinning his often-erotic photography into brainteasers. Now, he's being honoured with a major exhibit, titled Personae, which opened May 26 in Mexico City.

"Pierre Dalpé's Duplicitous Heart", No More Potlucks, Issue #4, Montreal, 2009

Capitalizing on the multiplicity of an individual's personality and the many selves housed within all of us, Pierre Dalpé approaches each of his subjects with a duplicitous heart: he twins his subjects within the frame to expose the construction of identity while questioning the authenticity of the photographic image. Interested in the process of transformation, Dalpé collaborates with his subjects to express different facets of their personalities. Through this partnership, he is able to coax out identities that lay just below the surface, blurring the boundaries of who is real and who is not, producing family portraits derived from a single subject.

"Revealing alter egos" by Matthew Hays, Noise Makers 2008, Montreal Mirror, Montreal, 2008

"I really like playing with the idea of surface realities, of things not being what they appear to be. What is real and what's fake? Viewers could easily walk into a gallery and think they are looking at a series of real twins, or sibling performers. When they find out that the portraits may have been manipulated and that they"re looking at a mix of real twins and fake twins and that some of the men are women and vice versa, that's where I find the series becomes really interesting.

"My hope is that the images will coax the viewer to explore or question their own potentially hidden identities."

"Question de perception" by Robert Nicolas, Journal La Liberté, Winnipeg, 2004

Intitulée Personae, l'exposition de photographies en noir et blanc se propose d'explorer la multitude de personnages qui se cachent chez un individu. Cette thématique se manifeste par le biais du portrait. Les spectateurs ont le défi de s'interroger sur l'authenticité de l'ère représentée, le sexe des sujets, ainsi que la véritable identité des personnages à l'intérieur de la même mise en scène.

"Les choses ne sont pas toujours telles qu'elles apparaissent, avance l'artiste. Je travaille avec l'idée que la personnalité d'un individu, à chaque jour, a le potentiel de varier, en faisant ressortir différents éléments des gens."

"Faking Death: Canadian Art Photography and the Canadian Imagination" by Penny Cousineau-Levine, McGill-Queen's University Press, p. 165, 2003

Pierre Dalpé's double portraits of Montreal transvestites, made from 1990 on, show, together, photographs of his subjects both before and after they have crossed-dressed. Several American photographers, most notably Nan Goldin, have documented the phenomenon of transvestism, and the Americans Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, and Lucas Samaras, along with earlier French photographers Claude Cahun and Pierre Molinier, have photographed themselves in the masquerade of the other gender. Dalpé's images, however, are unique in their persistently double presentation, suggesting that his subjects reside simultaneously in two different gender spaces, or in the space between them.

"Oh Boy?!?" by Lucinda Catchlove, Hour Magazine, Montreal, 1997

[...] Dalpé's latest work, Mr. Michaels and the Kim sisters, rends this surface even further. Using computer imaging, this "portrait" of Mr. Michaels and his "sisters" (both Mr. Michaels in drag) sitting together, invents not just the subject's mutable gender but also the time and space occupied. With this work Dalpé explores exciting new ground, pushing all the limits of storytelling and delving deeper into the concept of constructed reality. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction can tell many more truths when freed from an adherence to surface reality. Just don't be too sure you can tell them apart.