Photos in Glassy Essence

February 22nd, 2008

Two years ago I saw my first Cedar Lake performance. I was really impressed with Swan’s work with the company. When I talked with him afterwards we realized that we were taking our work in the same direction. We knew that we had to work together on a project in the future.

Collaborating with Swan is a natural progression for my work. I’ve always been fascinated by dancers and their movement and capturing that in still images. Each book of photos that I make tells a story but I also try to connect them together by using the last image of the last book to inspire the first image of the next book. My last image was of dancers moving through shadows and I wanted to push that image further, to see dancers flying in the air.

My work has always been inspired by stories. Sometimes the stories come from books and novels or sometimes they are stories that I make for myself. My books and photo sets always have a story, a beginning, middle and end. They take you on a journey. I love the way that choreographers are able to tell stories through movement but I like photography because I am not limited by time. I can use as much time as I need to find the right image and place it in a setting.

The photos are an integrated part of the installation. They provide key moments in the story while the choreography tells the parts in between. All the works that we’ve done over the past year have been experiments. We’re exploring and generating material that we will use in our story. We’ve worked with dancers on the ground, in the air and posing in portraits. Through all of this we’ve been exploring what kind of story this installation will tell.

I feel like Glassy Essence is going to be like a symphony. It has a lot of different elements that will start out in different ways but will come together to make one larger beautiful story.

-Francois Rousseau

Entry Filed under: Francois