featured image: alexey
Reflections on shooting stage
I have been a shooter of dance for a few years now, and as such, I recently I found myself reeling in self-doubt, as to whether my approach to image capture was progressive. I had forgotten what I had already known – that the same fundamental wisdom re-articulates itself again and again. That the brain learns and appreciates best what it already knows – or thinks it knows – and that a visual image is sometimes larger than the medium upon which it is portrayed. I think that the ideal medium of the art of dance is stage, and that image making is an art onto itself.
Picture
True, a picture speaks a thousand words, without text, but truthfully I suspect, only when this “story onto itself” – is only of itself. So while photographic imagery can be very helpful for storytelling – when one art form attempts to reconcile and depict another, I cannot think of any good reason not to always look for supporting text (context) – otherwise the whole curation threatens to be little more than a manipulation. Earlier iteration of this thought explored in ” Intent ” & “ Artiface ” .
Image Composition
The monologue continues, and I ask myself many questions. How different are the rules that guide the art I serve, from those that guide performer; he himself seeking also to create an image – albeit in his own element on his own medium? Are the lines in dance really any different from the lines that guide photographic composition – how so and when, and how many of them are actually curves? Where are these lines – outward inward or both? Who places these lines the dancer, the choreographer or the image editor, who is that? And was it really a mistake all along, to shoot in dance above all things simply – to capture the ecstasy?
iantonio - person 