Henry Corra's Same Sex America :: A family affair

Henry Corra's Same Sex America, a documentary of the lives of seven same-sex couples in Massachusetts during the post-Goodridge years, provides firsthand accounts of what it was like to live in the state during the legislative battles fought around civil marriage rights. For those who've paid any attention to the issue, the film is more akin to a scrapbook, taking a look back at what the community has already experienced firsthand. The film is screening as part of an exhibition at the Art Institute of Boston Gallery titled "Same-Sex America." Accompanying the film are two photo exhibits by Amber Davis Tourelentes. The first features portraits of LGBT-headed families taken in their homes and during the Family Pride Coalition's "Family Week," held annually in Provincetown each summer. The second, called "Swag," displays photos created using free merchandise given out by participants at Boston Pride. The Institute will hold a free reception for the public to see the exhibit Sept. 6.

The Institute's Andrew Mroczek, who curated the exhibit, said he hopes that juxtaposing the film with the photos will give viewers, both LGBT and straight, a new perspective on the state marriage battles. The film plays on a continuous loop, and is audible throughout the gallery. The exhibit opened last Friday, and Mroczek was on hand to see the audience's reactions.

"One of the things I noticed right off the bat was that when people were walking through the gallery and looking at the photographs ... people are constantly commenting on the protestors fighting against same-sex marriages and the phrases they used and how the sounds of their voices resonate with the images on the wall," said Mroczek.

He spoke with one visitor who described looking at one of Tourlentes's photos of a gay man holding an infant. The visitor described looking at the photo of a gay parent and hearing audio from the film of a protestor saying, "How sick can you be and still breathe?"

Mroczek said this exhibit differs from many art exhibits in that it tries to provide concrete answers to viewers' questions about married same-sex couples and LGBT families. He said artists often strive to provoke conversation while allowing viewers to interpret their work according to their own responses. In this case, he said, the documentary offers concrete information, particularly to those who do not think that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry or who are on the fence about how marriage equality has impacted Massachusetts.

"I think a lot of the people who are coming with a stigma on the subject can have certain questions answered," said Mroczek.

The film, which has aired on the Showtime network, has earned its share of rave reviews, including the Audience Award at the Provincetown International Film Festival. It follows seven same-sex couples grappling with the marriage debates, and Mroczek said he was impressed that the documentary does not attempt to sugarcoat their stories; at least one couple is having relationship problems as they contemplate a trip up the aisle, and the filmmakers do not shy away from examining those problems. And despite the ugly rhetoric coming from some opponents of marriage equality, Mroczek said he believes the film avoids demonizing the people on either side of the issue.

The photos by Tourelentes complement the film. While the film is a scrapbook of the political battle for family rights, her portraits function as an LGBT family photo album. Tourelentes has been photographing LGBT families for years. She first began doing portraits during Family Week in Provincetown when it wasn't necessarily easy for many families headed by lesbians or gay men to get a family portrait taken. "Families said, you know, it's really hard to have a family picture made, I don't want to go to Sears or I don't want to go" wherever heterosexual families go to get their portraits done, Tourelentes said. Not because they wanted to avoid straight families, but because they didn't feel welcome.

For Tourelentes, who is expecting her second child with her husband, the family project resonates personally. Raised in part by her gay father and his partner in the South End, Tourelentes, 37, says she doesn't "have those pictures in my own family album." So taking portraits of families headed by LGBT people is "one of these fantasies I got to live out," she says.

Although her work is firmly ensconced within the tradition of documentary photography, there is some conceptual play at work in the juxtaposition of families being on vacation and yet posing for a portrait on the stage at Provincetown Town Hall against the backdrop of gold curtains. "That you want to do that stuff when you're on vacation is so much fun. Everyone is sunburned, you have matching T-shirts on," she says.

She also approaches her work in the spirit of collaboration with her subjects. "That idea of descending and taking a picture of someone and then not having a relationship to them, that's always been something that I've been kind of mystified by," she says. Her portraits of families in their homes reflect that collaboration the most. "When I visit people at their houses, you know, people really decide the tableau in a way, they say, 'Okay, what corner of the house really kinds of shows us?'"

"We always are performing for cameras, especially with these family events," she continues. "This is exactly what I want to be doing with my camera. It feels very performative and collaborative and we're sort of all in it together."

Although the photos in the "Swag" portion of the exhibit - corporate goodies handed out at Pride - don't necessarily seem to fit with the Same-Sex America theme, Tourelentes provides an explanation. "These companies are just vastly important when it comes to gaining rights for these families. I mean, people are trafficking between their job place and their home and they're trying to protect their kids," says Tourelentes, who remembers attending Pride as a teenager during the 1980s when they were much more political affairs and focused on AIDS activism. When she moved back to Boston in 2000 and started attending the parades again, she was "flabbergasted," she says, by the change in tone. "Visibility is happening for these families and needed rights are happening because of groups like GLAD [Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders] and because of Massachusetts and equal marriage. It's a pretty lucky place and time and these companies have really functioned as part of that."

"Same-Sex America" will be at The Art Institute of Boston Gallery through Oct. 6. A reception for the exhibit will be held Sept. 6 from 6-8 p.m. at The Art Institute of Boston Gallery at Porter Exchange, 1815 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge (near Porter Square in Cambridge). Open Tues.-Fri. from noon to 8 p.m., and weekends from noon to 5 p.m. Call 617.585.6656.