by MATTHEW WOODLEY

Maryse Larivière’s photographs have a way of stirring up curiosity. That’s her standing in front of the member in the mirror, her body is on the bed in the background. The story? A man she knows sent her a picture from Europe. She Photoshopped herself into it and the shot became part of Out of This World, a series that showed at Sköl this past fall. It explores relationships - being together while apart and apart while together. As to more details, she’s somewhat elusive. “The goal was never to talk about my photos,” she explains. “It was for people to look at them and to wonder.”

Two years ago Larivière was just as provocative with her series entitled Sleepers. In the photos are slumbering men, “friends of mine with whom I shared the intimacy of the bedroom,” she calls it. The show got a lot of attention, some of which she found invasive. “This TV show called Play came down to my vernissage and the host was dressed in pyjamas,” she remembers. “He introduced himself as Hugh Hefner and the interview was done on a bed. He was super intense, asking me, ‘So you had sex with these people and they’re famous DJs from Montreal.’” Didn’t she want sex to pop into people’s heads? “Well it reveals a lot about people,” she muses. “It’s the first thing they think… I know that I’m taking my intimacy and putting it into the public sphere. It’s a little harsh, but it’s good to share these things.”

Larivière’s work extends way past relationships. She’s a regular contributor to San Francisco-based magazine XLR8R, highlighting luminaries from the Montreal electro scene, and has done photos for different albums, recently Mark Akufen’s. As for the future, a grant that went partly toward her last show will go partly to her next. Look for it in the coming months. :