…who I am
I am a photographer first, dancer second, and a choreographer third. Well, perhaps I’m a dancer first, a choreographer second, and a dancer last… actually, truth be told it doesn’t particularly matter. Suffice to say, I wear a lot of hats (most of them silly).
I’ve trained mostly within the ballet idiom with Houston Ballet Academy and thus the Houston Ballet was my primary exposure to the form. I eventually traveled to Salt Lake City where I attended the University of Utah and eventually came to perform with Repertory Dance Theatre as a full-time professional dancer. Years later the winds called me to Portland, Oregon where I now keep four walls and a roof, a desk, and a lot of photography equipment for capturing dance.
I also take darling self portraits and pass them along on serious artist’s statements.
…what I do
I’ve never been merely content to simply pose a dancer and leave things be. A pose is static and dance is anything but. Dance is at its core an expression of time, space, and energy. Still-photography takes away the element of time which makes a dancer, despite their specific intent, look inert. My goal within every single frame is to create movement that forces the photograph to have the illusion of a before and an after in effect giving the still frame life and movement.
While the implication of movement is a singular goal, my other fascination lies in moving the medium of dance photography beyond the cliché and into a place where the dance exists for itself. The four walls of a still photograph are meant to be designed with the deft hand of a painter and so I do with the brushstrokes of a choreographer, bending the aesthetics of ballet to suit my subjects.
The moments I create last less than the blink of an eye but it’s all I need.