opinion & features

Larry Glawson and Doug Melnyk have a special relationship – it involves a camera.

"Whatever impulse I have to photograph Doug ... he has to let me do it," Larry plainly states in the couple's downtown apartment.  Doug dutifully nods. "And I have the final say on whether the photograph is used," Larry says with a smile, "but I listen to Doug's feedback."

"I've never said no," Doug retorts. So, Larry's been Doug's personal paparazzi for more than 30 years. But at the same time, Larry has also etched a place for himself as a teacher, mentor, advocate and internationally-exhibited artist.

Larry's list of exhibitions include The Anonymous Gay & Lesbian Portrait Project (1992-2005), Failed Landscapes (2007), and the ongoing home bodies series (2008), which takes a disarming peep at slices of Larry and Doug's everyday life. Videos include Couplings (1992), the foundational and now nostalgic work that sees portraits of Winnipeg personalities spliced into fanciful relationship.

Now it's time to take a long hard look at Larry's body of work. Gallery One One One's exhibition of 27 X Doug is laying it bare. Brainchild of curator J.J. Kegan McFadden, 27 X Doug is part retrospective and part celebration, and zooms in on Larry's obsessions with photography and Doug in 27 shots."I've alway wanted art to be a source of pleasure," proudly confesses the self-professed lapsed Catholic.

What better way to mix business with pleasure than to snap pix of your lover? "In every project I've done, Doug's been a subject in it," Larry recounts, scrolling through files to reveal selections for exhibition. First to the screen is a black and white snapshot from 1979. "I was in my intro photography class," Larry says, "you carried your camera everywhere and photographed everything."

"A very trendy, hip, and sexy," Doug flirts with the fledgling photographer through the lens, his unbuttoned shirt putting a fresh hickey on exhibition.

"Doug got that hickey from somebody else."

"An architecture student," Doug offers.

"He was trying to seduce me," Larry affirms, launching into playful imitation: "They're lining up to give me hickeys!"

Photos that follow set Doug in a dramatic array of times, places, hairstyles, outfits, majestic skies and film stock. In one shot, Doug levitates above water in a wet bathing suit. In another he's caught in a blast of wind. And in others he's nobly holding pets - photogenic felines, Lucy the Chihuahua, even a rat named Louise. He's even at the bottom of a stairwell sporting a gigantic gorilla costume. "We had sex in that suit," Larry admits, chuckling. "It's also the first nude."

Larry and Doug burst into laughter and point at the gorilla's protruding prosthetic genitals.

Then a shot of Doug's fuzzy butt framed by pajama trapdoor. "This one is a technical bitch to print," Larry mumbles. But, truth be told, Larry is a bona fide techno-geek who really gets off photographic curve balls. In fact, playing with his equipment has lead to a new obsession. "I frame-grab, digitize, montage, and turn it into still photography," he rattles off.

27 X Doug showcases variations on Larry's technique, which sends his images through a virtual Frankenstein filter. For example, a photo-video collage has a digital peephole sensually meander all over a life-sized stitched picture of Doug's body. That's right, the "Olympian" money shot ain't so much of a turn-on.  "I'm getting away from the decisive moment when to trip the shutter," he explains, "I want to create images rather than take photographs ... I enjoy the strange distortions."

27 X Doug tours to Montreal and Halifax, and runs in Winnipeg to Sept. 17 at The University of Manitoba's Gallery One One One. Meet Larry at the closing reception – Sept. 15, 5-8 p.m.

And a book – I Look at Doug – is also in the works, including writings by Robert Enright, Jeanne Randolph, and Denis Lessard.

–Ian Mozden is a Winnipeg-based freelance writer. To comment on this or any other article in Outwords, e-mail letters@outwords.ca