The story of how I became a photographer often feels like a long one. It started, like so many things in my life, with my lifelong practice and love of dance.
Dance and photography are woven together for me. Times when I danced more seriously were accompanied by a nagging impulse to photograph myself and others moving. Now, when I am working as a photographer, I am connected to and informed by the perspectives and compositional techniques I learned for over three decades in dance classrooms.
It is rare that you will find me sitting still, taking static images with a camera on a tripod. Movement and photography are two sides of the same coin for me. They just go together. When I am taking photographs I am moving: dodging, bobbing, weaving, swaying, crawling, kneeling, up on my tippy toes, and sometimes climbing on furniture. I am often mirroring my subject’s movement throughout a session, if they jump, I jump too. Connecting photo making with movement is the culmination of so many things that inspire and drive me in my life. It keeps me awake.
So, when dancers hire me to photograph them, it is such an absolute gift. Both of my passions are combined, to create something that is truly wonderful. Dance and photography are very different in their forms, but share so much. The common ground between them is that both deal in the passage and experience of time. Imaginary Island, a dance company based in Portland, Maine invited me to photograph them in performance at Space 538, a gallery and venue on March 30th. Working with Imaginary Island was such a joy and I am so proud of the images that were created during their rehearsal and live performance. Without further ado, a collection of my favorite images from “You Are Going To Be Healed” by Imaginary Island.
