Renowned New York City photographer Howard Schatz has debuted a stunning new photographic series set at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, capturing the grace and power of two American Ballet Theatre dancers in a mesmerizing fusion of art and movement. No stranger to dance photography, Schatz collaborated with corps de ballet dancers Betsy McBride and Camila Ferrera to combine visual art with performance art, resolutely creating a dynamic form of digital photography.
Recently, En Face Magazine had the privilege of speaking with Schatz to get the inside scoop on this latest project, Dancers in the Museum:
EF Magazine: Tell us how this project came about. Why did you want to create these images? What inspired you?
Schatz: My wife and I go to museums a lot and it just occurred to me what a great backdrop it would be to use museum galleries and court spaces to place dancers.
For this particular project, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I photographed — for three half days — everything that I could see and find from the Temple of Dendur, The American Wing, the sculpture courts, and the greenhouses, the galleries, the French hotel rooms… everything, I photographed everything.
And then I looked at the thousand pictures I made and tried to imagine: what would it look like if there were a dancer in this space? I found 50 images and I made prints of those images. Then I cast two dancers from American Ballet Theater, Betsy McBride and Camila Ferrera, told them what I was doing: that we were going to make the photographs in the studio, and I was going to light them for each location. We got a very fine stylist, we had hair and makeup, and we worked all day long making images to fit into these spaces.
What I did is I removed all [of The Met’s] images, all their pictures on the wall, paintings, I removed all their sculptures. I made the rooms bare for my sculpture. So there’s some images that you see that have pictures on the wall, but those are my pictures that I made with either Camilla or Betsy. Some of the images you see the dancers in white sculpture. I photographed them another day in unitards and I turned those images into white sculpture. Just like The Met has sculpture all over the place, I used those marble sculptures in the pictures to enhance the imagery.
What was it like working with dancers?
I’ve always loved dance. Since my earliest life, I’ve watched and followed dance. It turns out dancers are capable of doing anything. They’re the great athletes. If you look at sports, a sprinter could run and jump. A quarterback can maybe run and throw. A basketball player can shoot a basket then run. They all have great ability, but not great abilities. They’re limited in a way. Dancers can do anything.
Dancers in my studio are in a way like clay. Even though I have them participate and improv and help me with ideas, they also take any suggestion. I say, move this foot, move this hand, turn your head, drop your shoulder, turn your hip. They know immediately.
I would show them the space and I would have a number of ideas. I’d have 10, 20 other images on my iPad, and I said something like, this might work, but I’m open to anything you might want to try that’s either a variation or something totally different. And we tried stuff.
It turns out ballet dancers can do anything. There were so many images that we made for each setting that it was easy to choose something that was special.
How did you select these dancers in particular?
When I go see dance, I use binoculars and I have a playbill. Then I use a pen and I circle on the playbill the names of the dancers that I feel are special. And then, I write them! I say, my wife and I saw you dance, and I’d love for you to come to the studio to work with us! Betsy and Camilla are really special dancers and they were both in it.
Dance is movement, depth, and sound. Photography is still, flat, and silent. How does one create a photograph that bespeaks movement, depth, and sound. I essentially photograph to surprise and delight myself. I try not to think about, will this make this person happy, or will that make the audience happy? I try to make images that are the absolute best I can do.
Miracles don’t happen every day. The act of making images and then and then working on images later in post production, is a form of play. It’s a happiness. It’s a happy struggle, which yields surprises and results.
We couldn’t help but notice the dancer’s beautiful wardrobe. How did your stylist Nikko Kefalas curate the fashion lineup?
He’s a very talented stylist here in New York who I’ve worked with many, many times before. Of all the stylists I’ve used, I’ve used Nikko more than anybody. I told him [the project] was about dance, I showed him pictures, and I let him use his imagination. He brought too many clothes, and he tried some things that didn’t work and found things that did work. I was confident we have things that really were great.
A final note from Schatz:
To leave you with one thing, I feel creativity comes from inside. All of us have a different fingerprint. All of us have different creative stuff inside us. If you think about will someone else like it or not, it really screws up what you discover inside about yourself. Creativity is exploration, experimentation, rejection of things that don’t work, and finding that which has never been done before that’s also miraculously wonderful. It’s a treasure hunt and. And I am blessed to be in this world of creativity.
To learn more, visit the Howard Schatz Photography website.
Stay tuned for more dance-based work inspired by Leonardo di Vinci’s “The Last Supper” with dancers from New York City Ballet – coming soon to enfacemagazine.com!
Image credits: ©Schatz Ornstein 2024
Betsy McBride and Camila Ferrera in “Dancers in the Museum” by Howard Schatz.
