Photographing the Art of Dance
By Tim Thomas

Is it a painting, sculpture, photograph, dance, or piece of music that moves the heart? Or is it an enigmatic code within the art? I believe there is a code, unknown to us, inherent within genres of art, that capture one’s attention. In any given art, one person is captivated and penetrated by its code, while another person is unmoved. This encrypted code glides effortlessly through the barrier of the rational mind, like a spring breeze through a screen. It moves through the viewer’s subconscious mind, a welcome presence, granting momentary relief for the solitary emotional captives that lie chained, yet still breathing, in deep recesses of the mystifying place. Art in its myriad forms, becomes a transport for outsiders who are denied access to these buried emotions by the thinking mind.

Tango penetrates the sub terrain of the thinking mind. The melancholic mourning of the bandoneon, played by the old man in the shadows, who has seen and forgotten more than we will ever know, foreshadows the drama of life as it will be enacted by intermingling bodies on the dance floor. The orchestra’s pulsating tempos, staccato, and syncopation, puncutate a movement reflective of intense passion, attraction, dismissal, anger, heartbreak, and reunion. The crescendo of innuendo, in a swelling surge of soaring music, lyricism, and skillfully orchestrated movement of dancers, is a knife of fire that slashes the subconscious gate keeper, and tantalizes primal memories, urges and fears. The fevered responses of so many people, through out the world, to this dance indicate the presence of a deep mystery worthy of attention, by plumbing the depths of body language spoken in the dance.

Tracery of Passion is more than a posing gallery for my photoshoots. It is a study of innuendo in relationship. The photography was executed with the same precision required in the cockpit of an airliner, or on the dance floor. As dance artists must subtly adjust their balance, and body line to articulate a prescribed movement, so too, was the process in creating these images.

Most of the poses were photographed an average of five to ten times in effort to capture innuendo. After each shot, I studied the pose for the slightest of head tilt, arm, hand, and leg position. At times the stiletto heel was partially obscured by a leg, while other times, one of my lights would not be properly positioned to illuminate each aspect of the pose. Most fashion photography is done with two light sources. This studio setup required the excruciating management of six studio strobe lights, carefully aimed, focused, and metered for their intensity to create the images in this guide. My hired assistant, a well known fashion photographer in Buenos Aires, advised that six lights would flood the image with light, drowning the potential for the drama and dimension I desired. But many hours of practice, as detailed later in these pages assured me of the outcome. While I am pleased with this initial project, there is much to improve upon as I continue.

Next year, I will release my first book, a discussion of balance within the context of dance, as metaphor for the balance of energies within partnership. The book will also include 15 selected poses from my Buenos Aires photo shoot, featuring the internationally acclaimed Argentine artisans, Guillermo Salvat, Slyvia Gryntz, Silvio Grand, and my long time muse, Ms. Mayra Galante. The studio poses will be digitally enhanced, and placed on backgrounds native to the city of Buenos Aires. No images are for sale.  Final exhibition images will be printed 30"x40" on fine art canvas, in black and white. An example of this work is displayed as the image on the home page of timthomasgallery.com

The example background on this image was shot well after mid-night in Buenos Aires, on very long exposure to create the depth of field I needed for perspective detail to include the full length of the train tracks, and the bricks that compose the street. Late night shooting was necessary to ensure streets were absent of distractions. Note there are no cars, nor people. This shot required approximately 2 hours of continual reshoot due to occasional cars or people finding their way into the photo. All exhibition images will have authentic Argentine backgrounds. The final images, in 30x40” format, on canvas, will be concurrently exhibited, autumn of 2010, in Boston, New York, and Paris, and London. I anticipate this will be interesting and informative, while adding significant dimension to understanding the intention behind the images, because the foundation for this work lies upon what is invisible to the eye.

A lingering question of the heart, drives one to dance, write, paint, or start a war. The foundation of my work is based upon such inquiries that trouble, and delight the heart. We are surrounded by beauty and treachery, joy and sorrow, dreams fulfilled, and dreams destroyed. We see love and hatred, companionship and loneliness. We see the wealthy raise their glasses while the destitute choke on a crust of bread. We all make sense of these things in different ways. I am making sense of it by observing these opposites, and recognizing the necessity of both.

Tango is a perfect metaphor for observing a symphony of opposites in unison that create beauty and provide context for understanding the parts. Male verses. female, light verses shadow, submission verses dominance, broken verses whole, and soft verses hard, are required mechanisms in this orchestrated construct of true-to-life relationships in which we have all found ourselves in one way or the other. Opposites provide a context of understanding one component by comparison to the other. Pain is fully understood in the context of relief. Shadows are impossible without light; and joy is fully experienced by one who has known grief. In sum, it is a matter of observing, respecting, and embracing these opposing forces, and employing the resultant energies in a balanced fashion to propel us through our lives.

My life has been one of many reversals: ups and downs, shadows and highlights, and is indelibly marked by all of the above. The latest reversal appeared as a very dark shadow, more than a year ago, when I had to take medical leave from the cockpit at American Airlines. I have been flying airplanes since I was 14 years old, before it was even legal for me to drive a car. I have recently been able to transmute a portion of the shadow, through this study of tango, which in many ways, is a journal of my life.

On a sunny Florida afternoon, January 1, 2008, Miami control tower issued landing clearance to my flight, American #2160, that had originated in St. Maarten. Five miles from the end of the runway, I was trying to breathe in every moment of this final flight. I called “Gear down” and felt the drag of the huge wheels acting upon the airframe as they fell into the slipstream, in a rude awakening from their slumber. Three green lights indicated the landing gear was down and locked. Two and a half minutes later, at 20 feet on the radar altimeter, I pulled the thrust levers to idle, glided 4 seconds, and I was done. I had been living my child-hood dream for many years. Now the dream was spooling down like my Pratt and Whitneys at gate arrival. After much discussion with my family and the wonderful staff at my company, I determined the medical leave was prudent, though it meant I might not return to the career I loved. I stepped out of the cockpit, and didn’t look back. I don’t like long good-byes, even on a good day.

At home, one medical issue led to the next. My life and energy spiraled slowly into a darkening emotional abyss. I had been flying airliners or corporate jets for two decades, to more than 40 nations all over the world turning jet fuel into beautiful white streaks across the sky at 8 gallons per minute. I enjoyed thousands of hours in cockpit solitude, and conversation with colleagues. I sipped Starbucks coffee and enjoyed first class meals while soaking in glorious sunsets and miraculous cloudscapes six miles above the earth. But now, my career, like Hurricane Wilma, was gone, leaving in its wake….Mr. Mom. Who was I? Where am I? Who are these people living in my house? I was lost.

After 3 months away from the cockpit and driving my family crazy, my loving, and eternally supportive wife, Nitza, encouraged me to act on my dream of photographing tango, and creating the images I have been dreaming of since 1999

My interest in dance photography was kindled in the midst of my work as a pilot with American Airlines. I had many layovers in Buenos Aires, and I loved to walk the streets photographing architecture, children, nature, and street entertainers. In 1999 when I studied my first dance images captured with a “mini-studio” I carried into local Argentine tango bars, I was awestruck by the inherent beauty, symmetry, and message within the images of these dancers. For nearly a decade, I dreamed of immortalizing these artists’ passion, discipline, and elegance balance, in the medium of photographic fine art print.

I am mesmerized with a plethora of striking and elegant paintings of dance found in many galleries. However, my search for photographic records of tango, returned nothing that relected my heart’s image of this art form. Years slipped by, and I continued to fantasize about how I could capture the images, though not certain I would ever have the time to execute the project thoroughly. When would I find the time? Though the dream was frustrated with family and work time limitations, I knew where the center of my life was. The right time would reveal itself.

As always, big decisions are made for us. We did not decide to whom we were born, in what nation, or hospital. We had no choice in selection of siblings. We had no say in how our parents cared for, or did not care for us. We had no choice in hair color, sex, shape of our body, or genetic predisposition. Yet all of these things dramatically limit or enhance our potential for success, and significantly affect our destiny as human beings.

Many think we fully control our destiny. I disagree. We are captain of our lives, but not permitted choice of ship, crew, weather conditions, currents, or even our point of origin, much like a woman waiting patiently at a Milonga has no choice in her dance partner. She may be a skilled artist of many years, and yet selected by an inept partner, unqualified to exploit her skill. Time and chance happen to all, even in the dance.

At birth we are dropped onto the upstream side of the river, and downstream we go. Row, row, row, your boat is more than a nursery rhyme. One person is given a substantial vessel on a river wide, easily navigated, and littered with innumerable ports of interest. Another is given a shabby vessel and assigned a river narrow, and littered with threats to the ship and crew, with limited ports of safety from treacherous waters. We are given wisdom, judgment, faith, hope, social skills, sense of humor, and the ability to love. That’s all. The final destination of our ship rests solely upon countless circumstances we have no control over, combined with our character’s choices amidst the journey, or in the storm. When the ship rolls deep and takes on water, we can seek safe harbor, or press on. Our choices include only those within our reach.

The resources of creativity, time, funds, and circumstance, were all placed within my reach, bringing to fruition, my dream of photographically interpreting the dance. I collected images of dance everywhere I could find them. I knew what I wanted to photograph, and how I wanted to photograph it, but I did not have the knowledge to master the art of casting light effectively, to trace the lines of the human body, while simultaneously invoking mood. I needed practice, and a lot of it. I began taking my equipment to South America on long layovers in Bolivia for the purpose of photographing hotel staff, local models, and colleagues at the airline. I found two phenomenal photographers in Bolivia, and spent much time with them photographing, sharing trade information, and learning in their studios. I still needed more practice than people had time for.

I needed a compliant, patient mannequin. On my next trip to Rio de Janeiro, I hailed one taxi after another, from one mannequin store to the next, ( Rio de Janeiro is the mannequin capital of the Americas) in search of the perfect mannequin I could take home to continue my study of light interacting with human form.

After a harried day of shopping for my mannequin, I stepped out of our crew transport parked at the international airport. I carried the mannequin under one arm, and suitcase in the other. I prayed for a crowd to disappear in. Instead, the crowd parted like the Red Sea. I was Moses. In the boarding lobby for my flight to Miami, an audience of 225 bored passengers, lit up like children when I appeared as one of their pilots carrying a life-size plastic naked girl tucked under arm. I would have been more comfortable, and less noticed, walking through the crowd wearing nothing but my hat. I’ll mail order next time.

The mannequin torso remained a monument in the center my garage studio, on and off, for three years as I observed ambient lighting conditions throughout the day, rotated it, and observed new and interesting shadow details. I practiced recreating what the universe does so effortlessly and marvelously. It was a formidable challenge, without formal photographic training, because light is a dynamic element, and countless variables affect its cast upon a subject. During hours alone in my studio, while my family slept, I taught myself to create many types of light that I would later use in my dance projects.

In June of 2008, I embarked on a mission of Himalayan magnitude. I carried my entire studio to Buenos Aires. The single task of moving the studio nearly saturated me, but I wanted everything in the images to be authentically Argentinean. I researched shooting locations, artists, studios, hired a bi-lingual assistant, obtained permits, and found a place to live, from which I could venture out, late in the night after the streets were empty to photograph background images I needed for my composite photographs. The night before I left, I stood in near despair, exhausted. I looked upon an array of debris on my garage floor: hundreds of pieces of a puzzle that would be re-assembled in Buenos Aires, as my studio. Surely I would forget something. It was clear to me now, why I wasn’t flying airplanes anymore. I was insane. Who else would carry this puzzle 4432 miles to take photographs of two people pretending to dance?

Ambition pioneered the West in a wooden wagon. Vision put a man on the moon, and the heart has reasons, reason knows not of. I am not insane…I am in love with beauty. I see it everywhere. I am in love with light, and I have one compelling vision: to trace and capture the lines of passion as I see them in the heart. This I do for myself, and for the few who will find the same sense of transport in the images.

I am pleased to have your interest in this project. Should you choose to photograph with me, I hope to create art for your home that can be passed on for generations as an enduring expression of your passion for dance