DIGITAL: Long Table: Dance Photography

After careful consideration of the news regarding Coronavirus (COVID-19), Gibney has decided to make this event digital via Zoom. You must RSVP to receive the link to participate.

Join guest host Preston Miller for an open dialogue on the experiences and perspectives of dance photographers, as we talk about the practice of capturing an ephemeral form.  

Guest Host: Preston Miller
Core Participants: Maria Baranova, Ian Douglas, Kevin Richardson, Scott Shaw

Long Table conversations adopt performance artist Lois Weaver’s non-hierarchical Long Table format, encouraging informal conversation around topics of concern to the community. Learn more here about Long Tables and how they work.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Preston Miller is a Marketing and Media professional with over a decade of experience in the Fine Arts sector. His career began while attending the Ailey/Fordham University B.F.A. program where he became the first student to receive a dual degree in both choreography and dance. While choreographing works for dancers with Ailey 2, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, New York City Ballet, and San Francisco Ballet, he began to help dancers manage their professional bookings and find new ways to market themselves to the culture. In 2013, Miller created & choreographed the film Enemy Within with the premise of uniting dance worlds across techniques. In The New York Times, he spoke of his passion, saying, “There are a lot of different dance neighborhoods and there’s no town hall meeting. There’s a real space to create a place where people can play!” Since then, Preston has created and directed several dance films starring Principal dance artists from the country’s largest arts organizations. His passion for using digital media to unite artists and tell their stories has been showcased in his work as a director and filmmaker for both creative and corporate campaigns for the likes of Comcast, Dior, BET, and more. He continues to manage dancers and has a roster of clients that include Principal Artists from Alvin Ailey, San Francisco Ballet, and The Royal Ballet.

Maria Baranova is known for photographing downtown theater and dance in New York. Through this she gained a unique access to the experimental performance community, and expanded her photographic work to portraits in her long-term project, Faces of Downtown Scene. Maria Baranova was born in Moscow, Russia and grew up in Helsinki, Finland. She holds diplomas in Art Painting and Photography. Maria has photographed performances for dozens of venues, including Baryshnikov Arts Center, Bushwick Starr, Chocolate Factory, MoMA PS1, Montclair University, New York Live Arts, Performance Space New York, Prototype Festival, PS122, Public Theater, Target Margin Theater, Watermill Center and more. Select publications include American Theatre, BOMB, Boston Globe, Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Village Voice, Vogue among others. Maria was a partisipant at Watermill International Summer Program in 2017 and 2018. In 2019 she had a solo exhibition at Invisible Dog Art Center with portraits form Faces of Downtown Scene – project.

Since 2006, Ian Douglas has been documenting New York City’s contemporary dance and performance art scene, regularly working with artists like Ishmael Houston-Jones, Miguel Gutierrez, Okwui Okpokwasili, and others. He is house photographer for Danspace Project, the NYU Skirball Center, New York Live Arts and Movement Research; and regularly photographs for BAM, the New York Times and others.

Kevin Richardson is a photographer based in New York City and the creator of Dance As Art: The New York Photography Project. His passion for taking photographs of dancers on location is more than evident in his images that both inspire and delight and what started as “a bit of a hobby” has been seen by hundreds of thousands in just about every country on the planet. With no formal training in photography whatsoever, in the summer of 2014 he took his gear out to Coney Island for what would be his first location shoot and has since done over a hundred such shoots, creating an impressive body of work that has been exhibited in group and solo shows here in New York, France and in private collections around the world.

Scott Shaw is a freelance photographer and producer and based in New York City. He’s currently the resident photographer for Gibney and their former Director of Digital Media. His photography has been featured in The New York Times, The LA Times, The Art Newspaper, The Village Voice, Gothamist, Time Out New York, Brooklyn Rail, ARTFORUM, ArtsJournal, Dance Magazine, and more. He has photographed for the C&G Partners, Museum of Modern Art, Gibney Dance, Elias Gurrola’s SS17 + FW17 Collections, Emory University Movement Research, University of the Arts, and more. His work has been showcased in the RAW Artist’s 2019 Winter Holiday Showcase.

XXYY & Martha@20 by Richard Move. Performer: Catherine Cabeen. Photo by Maria Baranova.

ACCESSIBILITY

Gibney 280 Broadway is accessible via elevator from the main entrance at 53A Chambers Street.

We welcome the opportunity to make this event more accessible. Please refrain from wearing scented products, so that people with chemical sensitivities can join us. Please request ASL interpreting, audio description, or open captioning 30 days before the event or submit other requests by completing our Access Requests and Inquiries Form or calling 646.837.6809 (Voice only).