You have developed a signature
style of photographing and
freezing moments in dance. How
did you come about such a unique
concept?
My style of photographing dance
began in the 1980’s. Working in
my studio instead of in the theater,
I asked the dancers to avoid
choreographed movements and
just improvise for the camera. These
unpremeditated moments happened
so fast, allowing me to capture
moments beneath the threshold of
perception – moments that could
only be seen as a photograph. The
results were considered radical at
the time as people weren’t used
to see dancers literally floating in
mid- air, in seemingly impossible
positions, or cropped by film’s black
border.
While some photographers are
meticulous about making a pre-
visualized photograph, controlling
every detail to realize their vision,
others are more spontaneous and
like to go with the flow. What is
the method to your madness?
My method is rather old-fashioned:
I pre-focus the camera on where I
ask the dancer to be, then I shoot
one frame at a time on my manual
Hasselblad 500CM camera that
I have had since the 1980’s. My
Broncolor strobes allow me to
capture the very thin slices of time
I require. I don’t previsualize the
picture. If I knew what the finished
photo would look like, I wouldn’t
bother to make the picture, as my
interest in this process is to get
beyond my imagination, not to
document an already-formulated
idea. All my pictures are taken
as single image, in-camera
photographs. I never recombine
or rearrange the figures within my
images. Their veracity as
documents gives the photographs
their mystery, and the surrealism
of the imagery comes from the
fact that our brains can’t register
split seconds of movement. I
am interested in the poetics of a
visual language rather than in its
literalness. I want my images to defy
rational explanation. There is no
“solution” to the questions posed
by my photographs- they are meant
to frame contradictions, present
the impossible, and find coherence
within chaos. The point is not to
have the viewer figure out what is
going on in the photo, but just to be
present at the mystery of that
instant. What has kept my interest
in this obsessive inquiry for over 40
years is that each time I invite dancer
into the studio, I have no idea what
the resulting images will look like.
Working without forethought, and
often with dancers I have never
met, nor seen perform, allows me to
create images that are beyond what
I could have imagined.
Your artist statement says,
“The ostensible subject of my
photographs may be motion, but
the subtext is time.” Can you
please elaborate for our readers?
The continuum of a dancer’s
movements illustrates the passage
of time, giving it a substance,
materiality, and space. I don’t ever
“see” the moment that I capture
on film, because I have to click
the shutter on the instinct that the
Tatiana Martinez
Hasselblad 500 CM 100mm F/8 1/250 ISO50