Photography series · Documentary

Off the Ground

For: Editorial assignment
Location: Lagos, Nigeria
Scope: Photography · Editing
Published: 17:00:00 26/08/29

One dancer, one teal wall and a camera kept level with the floor for an afternoon of jumps. The photographs follow the rhythm between attempts, catching the coiled pause, the kick and the landing that never looks the same twice.

Between the jumps

He did not want the landing photographed. He wanted the moment before it, the one where the outcome is still open. So that is what I shot, on my knees, with the lens at ankle height, for three hours, until the wall had gone from teal to grey and the light had gone with it.

A jump lasts half a second. A photograph of one lasts as long as you look at it. Between the two is the part nobody sees: the breath, the count, the small step back that every jump begins with.

Black and white image of an acrobat suspended upside down — The same brief, a different body: the acrobat, a week later. Photograph by Mateus Duraes dos Santos.

Small figure leaping from a rocky cliff into turquoise sea water — And the amateurs, on the coast that summer. Photograph by Jason Zeis.

I shot the wall for an hour before he arrived. You learn a wall the way you learn a face.

Crowd at an outdoor event, faces turned to the light — The crowd at the show, the night after the session. Photograph by Haotian Zheng.

The frame

The edit is nine frames, all from the last half hour. The teal is the wall, the shadow is his, the dust in the air is from the floor and I would not have removed it for money. The magazine ran it across two pages with no text, which is the highest compliment a magazine can pay.

Between the jumps

The frame

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