Baryshnikov photographs dance

<p>This is a beautiful, and beautifully kinetic, series of photographs of dancers by the great dancer Mikhael Baryshnikov. I'd love to know others' opinions of what he's doing: it seems to me a profoundly knowledgeable vision of dance combined with some very good technique. Search New York Times Lens Blog and Baryshnikov (I assume links are not allowed... but here goes anyway: <a href="http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/through-a-lens-baryshnikov-falls-in-love-with-dance-again/">http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/through-a-lens-baryshnikov-falls-in-love-with-dance-again/</a></p>

<p>It's interesting, and some of it works for me. Highly subjective, I think. I photograph dancers, but I don't dance (not like <em>that</em>), so I couldn't say if his photographs show what it <em>feels</em> like to dance. I prefer some motion blur in dance photography, but a little less than what most of his photographs seem to show. The heavy emphasis on blur may well be part of what is "feeling" the dance to him.</p>

<p>Very interesting stuff. It's hard to see quite what's going on in some of his shots. I would think a rear-curtain sync "pop" would probably clarify his photos and preserve the motion.</p>

<p>Photography is a different art from dance. A photographer may be better suited to photographically capture something significant about dance. Baryshnikov's photos are somewhat one-dimensional, a bit cliché, and don't really pierce the surface. IMO.</p>

<p>I don't care about reality or clarification, as the two previous posts suggest. The images are closer to art than to documentary dance photography and remind me of some of the work of Ernst Haas with moving animals or humans which was all the more impressive as it was done using film cameras and not digital with the latter's rapid feedback and ability to modify conditions of exposure to get the effect desired. Not sure what sort of instrument Baryshnikov used. He may well have used his know ledge of dance and technique to express dance, but then, as an artist, he may have used his subject matter to take him somewhere else pictorially and remote from dance itself.</p>

<p>The following note from the article may be a clue:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>In some ways, the simplest thing that photographs do is visually describe things. It is the foundation of the medium. It is only when photographers aspire to more that they can express their ideas, thoughts and inner feelings and make images that are not only literal.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Getting away from the literal is important in my opinion. For me, Baryshnikov senses that as well and his images tend to show that. What he is trying is not easy, as he is constrained by the medium itself and is trying to push those constraints aside and create art. I don't warm to all he has done, but I applaud his approach.</p>

<p><<<<em>The images are closer to art than to documentary</em> >>></p>

<p>This is, ironically, very much a statement of clarification. Either/or. My guess is Baryshnikov didn't and wouldn't make such an unnecessary distinction.</p>

<p>He might well have been intent on moving away from dance to go somewhere else, though I would highly doubt that. My guess is that he photographed DANCE for a reason other than to dismiss it as content. But if his intent was to photograph dance in order to move away from it, I actually see his blurs as quite literal and cliché. I think a better photographer would come up with an approach that wasn't so obvious and monotone. </p>

<p>This has, for me, little to do with reality, documentary, art, digital/film differences. It has to do with how the photographs look and strike me.</p>

<p>I am not assuming what Baryshnikov was doing. That would be beyond my psychic abilities. Some of us look at various human activities and nature as something we can react to rather than simply to represent, and that forms the basis for a form of creation. Many viewers to art galleries including my own have little idea what abstract art portends. It requires a certain knowledge of the medium and some tools of appreciation, something which took me a while to understand and I am not completely there yet. Anyway, I think Mr. B, whose legs replaced Mr. N, has more than a glancing contact with photography. </p>

<p><<<<em>rather than simply to represent</em>>>></p>

<p>I was not talking about simply representing.</p>

<p>A photographer can be in tune with his subject and he can, while acknowledging and even loving that subject, take it somewhere beyond mere representation . . . react to it, as you say.</p>

<p>As is often the case with these discussions, others often get unfortunately slotted into black and white positions, which is a shame. That I think Baryshnikov was likely very much wanting to portray DANCE does not add up to your surmised limitation that I thought he was simply representing it, not that there would be anything wrong with that.</p>

<p>One can express a whole lot about a subject near and dear to one's heart without either resorting to a forensic representation of reality or a dismissal of or fissure with the actual subject matter.</p>

<p>Transcendence is usually (always?) dependent on a ground. One can transcend dance while involving oneself with it intimately via the photograph.</p>

<p>There is a lot of gray area and overlap between a photograph being a document and a photograph being art. Most art photos DO document and a lot of documentary photos are art.</p>

<p>Many photos (perhaps all) have degrees of abstraction, but most still refer to a subject or referent. Of course these photos have abstract qualities (line, form, blur, distortion, color) but most people looking at them will see dancers. I will continue to assume that's what Baryshnikov had in mind. Had he wanted more pure abstraction and for us not to recognize dancers as referents in his photos, my guess is he could have accomplished that.</p>

<p>Weston's Pepper, for example, is significantly BOTH a photo of a pepper and NOT (just) a photo of a pepper. He shows us the beauty he found IN THE PEPPER. It is not some pure or idealized notion of beauty. It is beauty made visual and felt in the PEPPER. The pepperness is one of the reasons the photo got so much attention. Had it been a nude, handled as beautifully, it would NOT be the same photo. That's because, on a very important level, it's a picture of a PEPPER. The artist does not necessarily have to MOVE AWAY from the pepper or any subject, though he may. The artist is often so in touch with the subject that he wrings what no one else can out of it.</p>

<p>What we have in Baryshnikov's photos are DANCERS . . . and more.</p>

<p>If I was seeing it for the first time perhaps I would say interesting but since I saw similar in a local club competition I can understand why cliche is used by previous writers. Also the latest RPS show was full of it [ the technique if not the dance ] ... unfortunately.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>As is often the case with these discussions, others often get unfortunately slotted into black and white positions, which is a shame.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, I see that all the time, unfortunately, and from all sides.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>What we have in Baryshnikov's photos are DANCERS . . . and more.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Precisely, and what I am trying to communicate. Subject matter does not necessarily have to be the subject.</p>

<p>OP here. What I loved about these photos and what I love about art when I do love it is the strong sense of personal vision, displayed with strong aesthetic judgment and craft. I felt Baryshnikov's intelligence here: you want to know what dance is like, to me? Here it is. Technically if this style "has been done" a. I'm not overly familiar with it and b. the novel has been done but I still write them. One of the achievements of his technique is to give such a strong sense of movement while maintaining, when you look carefully, a very articulated insistence on the body and its forms. To put it another way, he made them liquid on the outside and solid on the inside. I think they are very good. Compositionally quite strong as well. I'd love to see him doing it -- I bet that is a kind of dance on its own.</p>

<p>Speaking of Baryshnikov and photography, if you don't know check out Richard Avedon's portrait of him. Also his other dance photos -- to be found on the Richard Avedon dot com web page, under archive, subject dance. Really amazing. I deeply admire Avedon. </p>

<p><<<<em>Technically if this style "has been done" a. I'm not overly familiar with it and b. the novel has been done but I still write them.</em>>>></p>

<p>Vince, I agree that just because something has been done, that doesn't mean it can't be engaging and significant still. Your analogy, though, doesn't really work for me. "The novel has been done but I still write them" would be more equivalent to "Photos have been done before but I still take them." When a certain <em>style</em> has been done, and done a lot, that's a different matter than whatever medium is being used and re-used. Plenty of paintings have been made throughout history and we don't criticize anyone for continuing to create paintings. But, if someone were to keep repeating what the Impressionists did long ago, we might suggest expanding the vision a little. I think that's what the comment about Baryshnikov's style was getting at, which is quite a bit more valid, IMO, than suggesting your not writing novels any longer because novels have already been written for so long.</p>

<p>Fred, I knew the statement was a poor analogy but cruised right on... it means something to me because the literary novel, in fact, has only thrived in one style (domestic realism) and probably <em>ought</em> to be abandoned at this point. And yet some new one will come out done so well that one is taken up again, and put through the transformation that art provides and demands. I think the argument that a thing has been done already arises when the work is not particularly startling or fresh in its fundamental conception (its deepest idea, regardless of style); but these pictures feel so personal to me I can't accept that dismissal. Perhaps I am naive. </p>

<p>Vince, you don't sound naive to me. Much of this is a matter of taste. I don't think we need assume that someone's liking or not liking these photos is about their level of artistic depth or their assumption that photographs need to be literal or any other "characteristic" of their vision. Some will like it. Some will criticize it. That can sometimes be more a matter of taste than anything else. I will give reasons why I do or don't like them, but giving those reasons doesn't mean I think those are somehow universally or objectively provable. When I give such reasons, I do so to let other people know where I am coming from and not necessarily to convince them that they should come from the same place. Thanks for further explaining what you meant by the comment about novels. It makes more sense to me now.</p>