“Tess Hewlett”
Capturing a body in movement is no simple task, and yet it’s a challenge that epitomizes Josh S. Rose’s creative practice. For years, the photographer has managed to translate the language of dance into pristine images, in which performers are suspended in exquisite gestures and dramatic shapes. In Rose’s scenes, dancers are entwined with one another, their limbs tangled into a knot; they float in mid-air; they hug columns and pillars in delicate balancing acts; and they perch atop staircases and spread out across floors.
It’s difficult to fathom that these photographs are, in fact, static and unmoving. But, by condensing these performances into single snapshots, Rose manages to memorialize the energy that defined them in the first place. The resulting compositions are dynamic, sensitive, and ultimately reflective of the intimate exchange between Rose and the dancers with whom he collaborates.
“There is a certain kind of performer who is willing to create and experiment in a setting with a camera and see where it takes them,” Rose tells My Modern Met. “For the artists that I work with most intimately, we lay bare our innermost desires, insecurities, ugliness, sadness, and curiosity to see what happens when we are raw.”
At the core of Rose’s work, then, is a sense of spontaneity and balance, which he often describes as “technical romanticism.” In the photographer’s mind, his practice revolves around responding to his surrounding environments, much like a Romantic painter contending with a landscape, their current condition, or humanity itself.
“I like to observe and I like to use empathy and delve into our condition as my methodology,” he explains. “How to convey it is more practical, or even technical. It’s a back and forth, often very quickly. I feel something and then I think of what that might be, and then I make some [technical] adjustments.”
My Modern Met had the chance to speak with Josh S. Rose about his photographic inspirations, his methodology, and why he gravitates toward dance within his work. Read on for our exclusive interview with the photographer.
“Reach”
“Joy Isabella Brown”
What first intrigued you about photography as an artistic medium?
The transportive power of photography introduced me, at a very young age, to other lands, other people, and other ideas. This was the initial love of the medium. The first photograph I ever fell in love with—and there have been many since—was one called Fog Coming In, Swansea, Wales (1955) by Carl Mydans, a well-known LIFE Magazine photographer. This image, as it turns out, wasn’t taken on assignment (he largely covered big world events), but while he was off-duty. My mother had seen the image somewhere and was so smitten with it she had it framed and hung in the house. It’s a 2/250 print and it now hangs in my studio, right in front of me.
My first experience with photo development was also quite romantic. I grew up next to the racetrack. As a kid, I would hang out there and I ended up in the photo-finish booth watching the photo guy there develop film from the strip camera that would shoot the horses crossing the finish line. It was fast work, but he was calm and at ease with it all. It felt like magic in there.
I grew up around a lot of artists and other colorful characters. One of my closest friends growing up was the son of Martha Rosler. And Chuck Wein, who was in the Factory with Andy Warhol, was at our house all the time. Art was always being discussed, dissected, and contemplated. I got into Bruce Nauman, Chris Burden, Yoko Ono—all these performance artists really intrigued me, and it was within performance art where I felt photography’s presence in fine art first.
That’s probably when I started to look at photography less as something to do for the sake of itself, but as a means to some end, creatively. There is not a ton of difference between using photography to capture a performance and using it to figure out which horse won a race. You’re always revealing something in photography.
“Parked”
“Base of the Spine”
How did you develop your personal style, and how has it evolved throughout the years?
I’m heavily influenced by the era I was born into. It was the height of the New York School of Photography, which Robert Frank and others had broken open. Then came Herzog, Eggleston, Shore, Leiter. These were the images I was staring at in wonder. I still stare at them even now, especially Leiter. I’ve always aimed at trying to hit the high notes those photographers were hitting.
I’d say that when I got very serious about photography, I was shooting largely at a wide angle. In terms of style, a lot of it was being dictated by that choice. I really like a wider, more inclusive look, but also I tend to see a lot in compositions. It’s hard for me to eliminate narrative elements of a scene as I see them all as additive in story. But then the trick with wide angle is how to then not overwhelm the viewer and to still feel like there is something to hold onto.
I matured the most in my style when I started working with dancers. This is when the real work of exploring our humanity and our relationship to our surroundings really started to coalesce. What we work on now is the authenticity of the moment in which art is happening. In the relationship between the camera and the art forms and working in a way that creates honesty. We’re rarely talking about camera stuff now. I think everyone recognizes that the collaboration produces the image, not the camera.
“David Adrian, LA Dance Project”
“Ate”
What compels you about performance art and dancers as photographic subjects?
Emotion. Fluidity. Letting go. There is a certain kind of performer who is willing to create and experiment in a setting with a camera and see where it takes us. Not everyone is drawn to do this. Lots of people are self-conscious or care too much about shaping their own narrative or “brand.” But for the artists I work with most intimately, we lay bare our innermost desires, insecurities, ugliness, sadness, and curiosity to see what happens when we are raw.
In documentary photography, which is sort of my training, you’re seeking subjects and using your empathy and curiosity to find where the heart of it is. With dance and performance, that is contained within the body, gesture, shape, and form. It’s somatic and, by its nature, flowing and moving around you.
I’m still seeking as a documentarian in a way, but what I’m looking for is intertwined with the emotionality of the performance, the prompts and the body’s response to its environment. It’s thrilling and challenging, it can also get very technical at times, but when it is flowing really well, I feel deeply connected, even emotional and fulfilled artistically in a way that no other art form feels for me.
“CalArts Dance”
What themes do you find most interesting in your photographic practice, and how do you convey them visually?
I think of the themes that are pervasive through my work as various forms of response. This was the work of the Romantic painters, too—humans within the throes of contending with their environment and their current conditions. I like to observe and I like to use empathy and delve into our condition as my methodology. How to convey it is more practical, or even technical. It’s a back and forth, often very quickly. I feel something and then I think of what that might be and then I make some adjustments.
I also think if any photographer is being honest, our themes are often developed post hoc, in the process of narrowing down our images and processing them. We see things in that process that we often didn’t out in the field. I think we are pushed to hide this part of our process in an effort to present ourselves as geniuses who can see moments beautifully, but in fact working with our images is a time-honored tradition and where much of the work takes place. I see post-processing as intertwined with shooting now, and often I am working on my images the same day I take them in order for it all to feel like one event.
“Nic Walton”
“Courtney Conovan”
Considering that dance revolves around movement, what techniques do you rely upon to translate performance art into a single, still image?
One common way is to find a “hero image”: one image from which an entire performance, or piece, is represented. This necessitates truly understanding the vision of the choreographer. It’s tempting in dance to wait until there is some kind of great physical feat: a lift, a leap, a dramatic pose of some kind. But contemporary dance relies less on this big stage moment and can be expressed in more subtle ways with equal effect. This is where the collaboration happens. If I know the themes of a piece, I can let that input seep into the decision-making while shooting. There is one choreographer who I work with a lot and often the “hero” image is one of people standing doing nearly nothing. It’s the attitude of their stances and where they are that is signaling the narrative there.
Then another technique, or set of techniques, has to do with finding an artistic style to any given shoot. These upfront decisions, about angles, light, or committing to a certain field of view, or compositional approach, like minimalism or maximalism—these can have a huge impact on how an image might convey emotion. I will often try to feel the emotional center of a piece and then choose some techniques with the scene or camera that feels reflective of that. Inevitably, a number of images come out of that, all viable candidates to express the piece in a still.
“Xuan Cheng”
In that same vein, how did you originally develop your methodology, and how long did it take to perfect?
I can’t recommend residencies enough. I was an artist-in-residence with Los Angeles Dance Project and also at CalArts. In both cases, for a number of years. This iterative relationship opens you up to trying things multiple times, being around for a variety of shoot types, but it also gives you access to very talented people, or people who are willing to experiment and play with you, in an effort to push ideas into new territories.
One of the things I learned working closely with dance is the power of inputs and references. There is language that can be learned that helps in communicating ideas to people who express themselves through their body. I now have these tools of language and prompts that I can bring into a shoot that help me express an idea to someone whose art form is in their body.
I think it took about five years of this constant practice before my style became recognizable. That was when people started telling me, “I knew that was your image the second I saw it.” I wouldn’t know exactly how to define that, but it’s a feeling. As a photographer, that’s okay. I think we chase aesthetic signatures too much. It’s a thing with commercial photography, where you get known for a look. I’d rather be known for a feeling or theme.
Benjamin Millepied and LADP at Richard Serra’s “East-West/West-East,” Qatar.
Bouchra Ouizguen and Corbeaux at Olafur Eliasson’s “Shadows Traveling on the Sea of the Day,” Qatar.
Janie Taylor, LADP, Anthem Mazelfreten, and Bis Repetita at the National Museum of Qatar.
What are some of your favorite recent projects, and how do they speak to your creative practice as a whole?
I completed a recent project with Lincoln Center this past year, which we will see go up very soon. It’s a large-scale mural in a tableau style that spans multiple locations across their performing arts institutions: from the NY Philharmonic and the NYC Ballet to Jazz at Lincoln Center and the NYC Opera. It took months of preparation and weeks of shooting, but it combined a lot of parts of my career into one huge image.
Because the image is composed of several images caught at different times at different locations, it required every aspect of my work over my career. We were shooting out on the street in natural light with dancers and actors one day and a live performance inside a venue the next day. I had to pull experience from different aspects of my photography work.
Then there was the work in Qatar, featuring the Los Angeles Dance Project back during the World Cup. Dancers and choreographers from around the world gathered to perform in and around various sites in Doha, especially at the locations of other artists’ and architects’ works: Richard Serra, Yayoi Kusama, Olafur Eliasson, Tony Smith, I.M Pei. To get the opportunity to be around so much art in that area of the world was incredible as a photographer.
“Arms”
What do you hope people will take away from your work?
I am here as an artist to evoke feelings and to play around in the muck of them. I believe we are almost too versed in therapeutic language these days, and often experience emotion as performative or scripted, because of media and politics. There are all these “dying metaphors,” as Orwell described them, that lower the overall average of felt things.
I think we struggle to connect anymore because of this. I am trying to make works approached through vulnerability and shoot them honestly, with people who can access emotional territories somatically and without layers of politics or even interpretation. My hope is that when you see the image that comes from this, you simply feel it.
Josh S. Rose: Website | Instagram
Interview has been edited for clarity and length. My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by Josh S. Rose.
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