Exploring The Bodies Of Dancers Through Photography

There’s much to admire about those who throw caution to the wind, put all their eggs in a single basket, and take risks to make their dreams come true. Howard Schatz, even at 75 years of age, is one of these people. An accomplished American photographer with more than 20 published books to his name though, he wasn’t always entrenched in the layered world of image-making.For several years before he discovered photography, he also worked as an accomplished ophthalmologist. Introduced to the world of cameras and films back in 1964, while he was still in his third year of medical college, he made time for his passion even while juggling his responsibilities as a doctor. “From Monday to Friday, I was a retina specialist. I was working as a researcher, the teacher, and a clinician full-time. I was a lecturer at Harvard, had written 100 scientific papers, 7 textbooks; put on two workshops a year and a large symposium. But, every Saturday was devoted to photography. My colleagues would spend their Saturdays on the golf course; I would spend mine, shooting,” he said in an interview with Marc Erwin Babej for the American Photo magazine.

While he credits most of his success to his second wife, Beverly Ornstein, we believe it is his choice of subjects and his perspectives that helped sky rocket his success. His first ever series, ‘Gifted Woman’, focused on women who were famous for what they achieved not how they looked. Then followed ‘Redheads’, ‘Homeless’ and ‘Water Dance’. When it finally became clear to him that he no longer wanted to juggle his two careers however, he chose photography.

25-years into the career, he still has something new up his sleeve. “I want to look through the view-finder of the camera and fall in love: I want to look through my viewfinder and see an image I’ve never seen before anywhere else,” he says. In his endeavour to keep himself impressed however, he has managed to continuously blow the mind of those who follow his work.

‘Passion and Line,’ discovers dancers in a never-been-explored light. His images are not about dance—they portray dancers as graceful and powerful, elegant and explosive, all at once. He admires dancers for the body that they create for themselves through years of training, and he interprets the masterpieces that are their bodies in these series. For this, he worked with members of four leading dance companies, including the San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and Paul Taylor Dance Company. If you’re expecting pictures of women in tutus, gracefully poised, you may be disappointed but he has managed to capture the essence of the art form. Schatz explains that the “images in this book are not dance photographs; they are photographs of dancers who performed for an exact moment for the camera alone.... We collaborated to create the `performances’ that resulted in the photographs.”

Scroll down to view some images from the series.

You can explore his other works on his website.