“Dancing to Abstraction”

The body of work is about a group of contemporary dancers that I photographed over and eight-week period in their rehearsal studio in preparation for the production of “Cabaret Dances”, produced by Jean Isaacs San Diego Dance Theater.   I had begun photographing the dancers during their “Trolley Dances” in a conventional way.   As a painter, however, I wanted to photograph the dancers in a way that gives the feeling of painting.

Jean’s dancers are so beautifully fluid in their movements that inspired me to capture that sensibility. Specifically, I was intrigued by the possibility of slowing down motion to the point of abstraction with the distortion of shape and color. The painting “Nude Descending a Staircase” by Marcel Duchamp was a painter’s attempt of showing motion in paint. It is the inspiration for this body of work. In a way I am doing the same, but coming from photography back to the feeling of painting. My earliest attempt to do this was a painting, “Dancer in a Landscape”.  The result has been a published book by the same name, “Dancing to Abstraction”.

Bodyscapes:  The Nude as Landscape

Originally created as a handmade book, three images have been printed as platinum/palladium prints.