My longstanding interest in feminine role models and my predilection for historically-informed projects initially led me to consult the McCord Museum’s open-access platform, which contains several digitizations of their photographic collection. Upon discovering this online repository of images, I became spellbound by the numerous society portraits, many taken by the Montreal-based Victorian photographer William Notman.

In 2016, I produced the 3rd installment of Belle de Jour, inspired and informed by the William Notman Photographic Archives. This body of work encourages viewers to witness and appreciate the extraordinary legacy of the archive and the affinities that transpired between Notman’s remarkable images of a specific era with contemporary photographs of my own. By looking closely at his sensibilities and the underlying eccentricities of his work, I attempted to build a visual relationship between past and present modes of female representation, perhaps offering a conceptual perspective on the female portraiture that delineated the passage of time. The series was shown in an exhibition curated by Zoë Tousignant at the FOFA Gallery at Concordia University.

Press:
https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/photographer-finds-inspiration-in-female-portraits-of-the-past

https://cielvariable.ca/en/issues/ciel-variable-104-another-angle/marisa-portolese-belle-de-jour-iii-james-d-campbell-meets-eye-dimensional-portraiture/

https://fondation-phi.org/fr/article/marisa-portolese-parle-valerie-belin/

https://files.cargocollective.com/c1786539/concordia-link-article-2016.pdf

https://files.cargocollective.com/c1786539/pause-button-article-2017.pdf

https://files.cargocollective.com/c1786539/milieux-institute-article-2017.pdf

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/1.3500882