Four photographers from the UK and India whose work has featured prominently in Pulse magazine over the last decade reveal their passion for dance photography and relate some high points of their experiences in its pursuit: Chris Nash, Simon Richardson, Vipul Sangoi and Avinash Pasricha.
A dance magazine could not exist without photographs and it is debatable whether dance history, theory and practice would be as lively and effective without photography. Before the advent of photography in the early nineteenth century, dance had to rely on illustrations, paintings and sculptures to capture and convey dance. We think of the impressionist paintings of ballet dancers in the dance halls of Paris by Degas and the sculptures and paintings of, among others, a Cambodian dancer of Rodin. In India of course the glorious bas-reliefs of dancers carved on temple walls became the encyclopedia that the choreographers of post-Independence India consulted to make up the vocabulary of dance.
The value of ‘freezing a moment’ in time – one that the human eye may not have time to process in this transient art form ‒ gives great importance to the role of photography. Photographs can also sensitise the viewer to take in the technical detail and the mood: the focus and intensity of the performer, the beauty of the line from head to foot and the subtlety of emotion. It is a symbiotic relationship: dancers need photographs to communicate their work and fortunately there are photographers who glory in capturing the precious moments of dance.
Avinash Pasricha
AVINASH PASRICHA comes from a family of photographers. Born in 1936, he grew up in a studio. He was Photo Editor of SPAN magazine, published by USIS in New Delhi, from 1960 to 1997.
Over the last fifty years he has covered a range of photography from fashion to industrial, choosing to specialise in performing arts since 1960. There is not a dancer in the field who has not been captured by his lens. Today, he has the largest personal collection of pictures of Indian dance and music. His prolific output is matched by a great generosity of spirit, which makes him responsive to the needs of artists.
The Indian dance sector owes a great debt to the seminal work of Pasricha, especially for the dance-style titles that he has co-authored with scholar Dr Sunil Kothari: Odissi, Kathak, Kuchipudi and Sattriya, and one entitled Rhythm in Joy with dancer Leela Samson. Indian Classical Dance: Tradition in Transition, co-authored with dance critic Leela Venkataraman and published by Roli Books, has been widely acclaimed.
He has had four exhibitions of his dance and music pictures in galleries and auditoria in Delhi and Chennai. The Pasricha gharana continues with brother Kiron, nephew Ravi and son Amit, all professional photographers.
“I asked the dancers to dance their usual jumps and shot a full roll.”
What role do dance photographs play in capturing dance and communicating its essence?
For the photographer it is a challenge to continually observe the performance and manage to capture the fleeting moment that shows the essence of the dancer’s involvement on stage. Especially in Indian classical dance I look for expressions in the eyes and face that come from the heart and are not just pretty poses and colourful costumes and jewellery. It is quite difficult in a live concert because you may not have seen the performance before. You do not wish to disturb the dancer or the audience, and you have no control over the stage lighting. And with the digital cameras I use there is a split-second delay between the click and the recording.
If dance is a visual form, do images convey more than words? Is a photo-graph really worth ‘a thousand words’?
Most publications need good photographs to attract the reader to pick up the publication and read the reviews or stories connected with dance … if I’ve managed to get the right picture, it will convey the essence of what happened much more than words can.
What contribution does photography make to building a company or artist’s ‘brand’?
A good photograph well-used certainly builds up the brand value of the dancer and the performance. Now, with so many pictures put up instantly on Facebook, the dancer gets known and, if they use the photo credit, the photographer also gets known. Too often they forget the photo credit, unless the photographer himself is putting them up on Facebook!
What first attracted you to photograph dance, and when?
My dance photography started shortly after 1966 when I covered a music festival for the first time in available stage light instead of flash photography, pushing BW Tri-x to 1200 ASA using an acufine developer. The ‘mood’ in the pictures came out so well that I got hooked on available light. Moving from music to dance was a natural progression for me as dance is more of a visual expression on stage, plus there are no mikes and so on to block the view. I was the first to try multiple exposures on one frame, even though the Nikons I used then did not have that facility.
How did you train?
I did not train for photography with anyone as I grew up in my father’s studio and watched him do portraits. Becoming a photo editor of the pictorial magazine SPAN gave me the opportunity to practice photo-journalism. My growth has largely been learning by doing.
What is your biggest achievement?
My greatest achievement was winning a big first prize of Rs. 30,000 in a photo contest titled ‘Made For Each Other’ in 1981 for a picture that showed a hand moving on a drum and a dancer’s feet with ankle bells in motion. Somehow the concept worked. It was performed on a makeshift stage with tungsten lights.
What is your greatest frustration?
Nowadays it is when you miss capturing the peak of the movement with digital cameras because of the time lag between the click and the recording of the image.
Can you choose a favourite photograph of your own and say what makes it special for you?
Way back in 1980 I was shooting Manipuri pong cholom dancers for my first dance book in the small Triveni auditorium. Having set up four strobe lights in the four corners, I asked the dancers to dance their usual jumps and shot a full roll. The transparency-processed roll came many days later and this was the best shot. So it is pure luck!
Chris Nash
CHRIS NASH is a London-based photographer who has a long and varied experience specialising in performance and stage photography and studio shoots. Eighteen different countries have hosted more than sixty exhibitions of his dance photographs and he has received a Dance Umbrella/Time Out Award in recognition of the impact of his work on contemporary dance in England.
“It’s this exaggerated perspective that makes this picture work, along with the … energy and dynamism of performers.”
What role do dance photographs play in capturing dance and communicating its essence?
I try to capture something of the flavour of a dance, or rather something of the experience of someone who will see the dance… Sometimes you can only hope to reproduce the look of a dance – its surface – and that can be enough. The role of the photos I’m commissioned to take is to catch the viewers’ attention and give them some idea about the dance’s quality and narrative. They also, as I’m constantly being reminded by marketing people, have to ‘say’ dance, so in that way I suppose I’m striving to capture and communicate an essence.
If dance is a visual form, do images convey more than words? Is a photo-graph really worth ‘a thousand words’?
Obviously I’m going to say yes to both those questions.
What contribution does photography make to building a company or artist’s ‘brand’?
Images play a very big role in brand-building. They can convey production values, provide an identity that potential audience members can relate to (or not), reference other art forms that the public can identify with, place individual dances within a certain context and set up audience expectations that the choreographer can play with. They can also play to the ‘star’ system, whereby audience members start to identify particular dancers or performers that they value and will go to see again and again.
What makes a good dance photograph?
A photograph, whatever it’s of, sets up a little narrative in the viewer’s mind about the slice of time contained in that photograph. What is happening? What just happened? What is about to happen? If those things are communicated, then it’s starting to be a good photograph.
What first attracted you to photograph dance, and when?
As an art student I went to a college disco and a woman (who was a Laban student) did a whole dance in front of me, for me, and then came over to talk. I guess I’ve been kind of repeating that moment ever since.
How did you train?
I didn’t have any formal training; I picked up a camera at art school and started taking pictures. I did a darkroom induction course there and that gave me the photography bug, but other than that I’m pretty much self-taught.
What is your biggest achievement?
I guess the Flash Of Light exhibition at the V&A in 2011.
What is your greatest frustration?
Aside from life in general? That I don’t make a decent living from doing what I love.
Can you choose a favourite photograph of your own and say what makes it special for you?
I’ve chosen this recent image of Material Men that I made with Shobana Jeyasingh for the publicity and marketing of that piece. As with a lot of the work I do, the photos have to be made in advance of the actual creation in order to meet the print deadlines for the touring venues. The long-standing working relationship I have with Shobana means we understand the way each other works … When you only have a few hours to make several hopefully brilliant pictures and some of that time has to be given over to improvising and exploring, you need to push things along and discount unprofitable ideas quickly. Even though we had discussions beforehand and had a basic idea about what we were aiming for, it’s still important to be able to go with the flow during the shoot, always bearing in mind that you need a guaranteed result at the end of the day.
The shoot’s main focus was going to be the sari material and the way the two performers – Sooraj Subramaniam and Shailesh Bahoran – would use and interact with it, but Shobana was worried that the material they’d been working with wasn’t right. So, with an hour or so to spare in between sanding floors at home (a weekend DIY project), and with her specific instructions, I made a quick trawl through the sari shops of Tooting Broadway.
When we got to the studio (one I hadn’t used before) to set up, I realised I’d need to use a fairly wide-angled lens to be able to fit things in. I’m usually fairly loth to use such lenses when photographing dance because the distortion of limbs can seem unnatural and forced, but they have the possibility of adding dynamism and movement in the composition. So I decided to go with it for some of the shots. It’s this exaggerated perspective that makes this picture work, along with the amazing energy and dynamism of performers who were a joy to work with.
Simon Richardson
SIMON RICHARDSON has been a teacher, a director of a housing charity, a furniture-maker and boat-builder in his previous lives. An impeccable aesthetic sensibility together with practical hands-on skills and an embracing of new technologies gives him the ability to take pictures of performing artists that capture their soul. Chair of Kadam Asian Dance and Music since 1998, Simon has photographed the annual Kadam Summer Camps (1998‒2004), which subsequently became Kadam and Milapfest International Summer Schools (2005‒2007). In 2000 Kadam toured an exhibition of dance images under the title Living Tradition to five venues around the country and Simon was one of the three photographers including Ray Clarke and Suran Goonatilake. In 2005 his work was exhibited at the launch of the Gharana Festival at the Patidar Centre, Wembley. He has also exhibited in Bedford and Outer Mongolia. Pulse owes a heavy debt to Simon Richardson for providing the backbone of the magazine’s images.
“… so many of the moments are fleeting and the eye cannot take in the detail of, say, a virtuoso leap.”
What role do dance photographs play in capturing dance and communicating its essence?
I’m not sure that photography can capture the essence of a dance performance. What it can do is reveal the beauty, grace and expressiveness of a series of moments, some of which will be true to dance when the dancer is achieving the form of the body to which that particular style aspires and conveying the emotion of the movement. The additional bonus of the photograph is that so many of the moments are fleeting and the eye cannot take in the detail of, say, a virtuoso leap.
If dance is a visual form, do images convey more than words? Is a photo-graph really worth ‘a thousand words’?
A photograph is not worth a thousand words in the same way that an apple is not worth a thousand pears and a crème brûlée is not worth a thousand recipes. They are different and each has its place.
What contribution does photography make to building a company or artist’s ‘brand’?
It is nigh impossible to make a good dance picture of a bad dancer. The quality of the dancer is manifest in a photograph and thus, by extension, the quality of a dance company will be evident. And of course the style, setting and number of dancers in the photograph will contribute to establishing a company or production’s identity.
What makes a good dance photograph?
There’s a simple test for a good dance photograph and it’s the wow test. But a wow shape has also to include a meaning, to convey an emotion and to have a match between the shape and the intention.
What first attracted you to photograph dance, and when?
Who wouldn’t want to photograph dance where the body is displayed in a form of perfection developed by maybe hundreds of years of dance theory and practice? I took ballet class when I was very young and then played sports where speed, timing and physicality were critical. When these qualities go hand-in-hand with the possibility of expressing deep forms of emotion we have all the conditions that explain my passion for dance and, above all, for dancers.
How did you train?
I am self-trained – fuelled by an enduring love of possibilities of the form, and a puppy-dog-like devotion to the practitioners.
What is your biggest achievement?
It is perhaps that, very occasionally, I enable a dancer to show the full extent of their genius.
What is your greatest frustration?
It is to be asked to produce photographs, say for publicity, and then not be provided with the conditions that make it possible. Setting, costume, a concept, decent light and enough time are prerequisites.
Can you choose a favourite photograph of your own and say what makes it special for you?
It’s hard to choose a favourite – you might as well ask a writer his favourite word or a mother her favourite child! But this one has a huge sentimental appeal to me. Sujata Banerjee and Sanjeevini Dutta arranged a UK tour for two kalaripayattu artists, Shaji K. John and Binoy, and we did a photo shoot in Chisenhale studio. It was very early in my career and I wasn’t familiar with the form, but truly expert practitioners make the job of photography simple. They needed no direction and produced shape after shape with brilliance and the modesty and gentleness characteristic of so many top martial artists. One of the spin-offs to this photograph is that it got me a dream seven-year job of photographing movement with the International Workshop Festival whose director became my dearest friend. But, most importantly, I feel that an unbreakable bond between me and the artists was forged in that brief moment.
Vipul Sangoi
VIPUL SANGOI studied Visual Communication at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, India. He ran a design consultancy in Delhi, and was involved with charities working with crafts and performance. In 1996 Vipul moved to the UK to do an MA in Interactive Multi-Media from the London College of Printing. His current London-based consultancy provides design, photography, conceptual and technical inputs for artists and organisations. He has also collaborated in lighting, stage and costume design, multi-media and choreography – as well as art-directing a feature film.
Vipul is married to Anusha Subramanyam, a Kalakshetra-trained UK-based bharatanatyam dancer. He was the designer for Pulse during its first three years.
“The movements and emotions were precise and powerful.”
What role do dance photographs play in capturing dance and communicating its essence?
Dance photographs are of the moments in dance, but they also convey the movement and mood of a performance. They show not just finished poses but the making of the dance. Photographing a live performance has a special intensity. It’s a way in which I engage with the performer, the choreographer and the performance. I myself have to be as much a performer as an observer.
If dance is a visual form, do images convey more than words? Is a photo-graph really worth ‘a thousand words’?
A good dance photograph reveals the performance. It is my record as well as an impression of the piece. A photograph, like a piece of writing, reveals the author’s own sense of enjoyment, criticism and biases as well as skill with craft. Photographs can (also) be misleading; they might make a bad performance or poor artist look good, or a good artist look poor.
What contribution does photography make to building a company or artist’s ‘brand’?
Images are incredibly powerful tools in evoking a person, place or mood. Good dance photographs definitely enhance the image of an artist or company. In the age of social media, photographs are even more important to establish the work of an artist. A good photograph can draw in an audience and help establish the appeal and quality of an artist and their work.
What makes a good dance photograph?
For me a good dance photograph conveys the way I felt watching the performance. In my personal work I’m looking to engage with an artist’s or company’s intent and execution of a work, whereas in a commissioned shoot I’m looking for those moments that convey as much of the work’s core as possible – and these are not necessarily ‘the good bits’. But from the photographs I learn more about the artists. Photos are dependent on the quality of light and stagecraft, things that are normally not designed for photography during the performance. Also, good equipment offers better opportunities for better photographs.
What first attracted you to photograph dance, and when?
In my first year of college I saw a kathak performance by Sitara Devi. I don’t remember the performance or the pieces, but I do remember her power on the stage. There was a transformation that happened as soon as she moved. Probably a year later I had a chance to see the legendary Biru Maharaj. I borrowed a camera from the college, loaded a couple of film cassettes and, sitting on the theatre’s steps, photographed the performance. Looking through the camera made me an active participant. It was exciting to see the performance in the contact sheet. I was hooked.
How did you train?
Inheriting my father’s love of photography, at the age of 10 I got my first camera – a simple, second-hand twin-lens Kodak. After school I studied at the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad. Amazingly, I managed without owning a camera until near the end of the programme, photographing with the college’s equipment, borrowing friends’ cameras and learning the crafts of processing and printing.
After college I started my own design practice. I made a darkroom, processing b&w film with three trays of ice just to maintain water at 20°C (68°F) in the heat of Delhi. I’ve always been interested in technology, meeting my first computer – a Mac – in 1988. It was love at first sight. In 1996 I came to the UK and did a degree in interactive multi-media at the London College of Printing.
A camera has become an essential element when I go to a performance. In (the past) there were difficulties about what one could photograph: limited film sensitivity, manual focus and hand-winding after every shot and the only time to review the photographs was after processing. I’ve enjoyed the transition from film to digital. New tools provide greater control but also greater possibilities.
What is your biggest achievement?
Is there any such thing as biggest? It hasn’t happened to me yet. But there are many things that give me a sense of achievement, such as my solo photography shows – an exercise in critically reviewing my past work with a positive outcome.
It’s a great achievement if I feel I was able to ‘perform’ with the artists while remaining a critical viewer. Probably my biggest achievement is the feeling I get seeing photographs of a performance that reflect what I remember of it.
What is your greatest frustration?
The space to photograph a live performance is small and a shrinking space. It’s frustrating, too, when performers find it hard to look beyond the flaws of age; when dance photography is treated more as documentation and less as art!
Can you choose a favourite photograph of your own and say what makes it especially satisfying/representative/notable for you, including any memories of the shoot or associations with the artist/s involved?
A single photograph can rarely do justice to an Indian classical performance. There are so many aspects between the dance and theatre in each of the styles that one needs multiple photographs to convey the full performance.
The chosen photograph is from the Epic Women conference organised by Anita Ratnam in Chennai. It was by Kapila Venu who presented Sita Parithyagam: The Abandonment of Sita in nangiarkoothu dance style – an offshoot of koodiyattam. Kapila was a student of Guru Madhava Chakyar; I’d not seen a koodiyattam performance since I’d photographed him in 1987, one of my best dance experiences. Kapila occupied a small section of the stage, backed by three chenda drummers and lit by a large oil lamp. The performance probably lasted about an hour but I could’ve watched her for many more. The movements and emotions were precise and powerful. (It) reminded me of her guru, who just sat on a wooden stool and performed a comparatively minor character from Ramayana, the monkey king Sugreev, for a whole hour.