Isabella Boylston // Havana, Cuba
In a very round about way, the only reason Hasselblad Ballet exists is because of Isabella Boylston.
In October 2017 I was contracted by a client of mine to photograph her live album recording in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and as always, I was excited for the opportunity to travel. After ironing out the contract and travel details for that event 6 months into the future, I started researching how many times I could fit Argentinian pizza into my schedule. In my humble opinion, Argentinian pizza is unequivocally the best in the world, change my mind.
Coincidentally, and oddly enough, that same week I came across a Vogue article about the experience of a NYC ballerina who had traveled down to Buenos Aires to guest star in their ballet company. At this point in history, I had never even looked twice at a ballerina, and thus my interest in this article was not in the ballerina, but rather the fact that I had just booked a shoot in Buenos Aires, and so I was curious of her experience. The article was full of images from her trip, and I recognized many of the locations in her photos. Towards the end of the article, she introduces a ballerina-friend she made while in B.A., and also another protagonist in this project, Marisol.
I decided to reach out to Marisol via Instagram and see if she would be interested in taking some pictures on my off day. I thought to suggest making the photograph with my Hasselblad, as that was my then choice camera for all extracurricular photos I made, and also might spark enough interest in Marisol so that she says yes. While hesitant to agree to any photo shoot six months in advance, she did express interest, and said we can play it by ear as we got closer to the date. Perfectly coincidental, the only day she was available to shoot was Sunday, which happened to be my only day free on this trip.
After our shoot, Marisol suggested that I should continue shooting ballerinas, expressing how she enjoyed our shoot, and that I was quite different than other ballerina photographers she’s shot with. “Yeh,” I replied, “that’s because I have no idea as to what I’m doing! Ha!” Because of that encouragement, I did start making it a point to reach out to ballerinas as I traveled, whether for work or pleasure, and Hasselblad Ballet was born.
In June 2019, I found myself once more eating the best pizza in the world, in Buenos Aires. Of course I had to schedule a shoot with Marisol, and afterwards over coffee and alfajores, we discussed how far I’ve come since we last shot more than a year ago. She asked me how it was that I had started this Hasselblad Ballet project, and I told her of this article I had once read, “about this NYC ballerina traveling down to Argentina”. “Oh, that’s my friend Isabella Boylston! You should shoot with her!” By this point in the project, I knew very well who Isabella was, seeing her image on an almost daily basis, as I consume ballet photographs regularly. When she made this suggestion, I quickly (and perhaps a bit uncouthly) asked her if she could connect us. Marisol said that she would try to connect us, and that was that.
A few months later I happened to be in Madrid, photographing for this project, and I saw on Isabella’s Instagram that she was in Paris. I got excited, and reached out to Marisol for some help connecting, since I would be traveling to Paris that next day. Unfortunately for me, Marisol told me that Isabella would be traveling to Madrid the next day, and I was crushed. Every time I happened to be in NYC after that, Isabella happened to be out of town, and I didn’t even bother trying to make any connection. Understanding Isabella’s busy schedule, I finally decided to simply write off the idea of ever having Isabella in my project, and I had come to peace with that.
Fast forward to January 2022, and as I’m landing in Charlotte on a layover on my way to Havana, Cuba, I get multiple texts from ballerina/o friends: “Dude! Isabella is in Havana!” Almost the next minute I saw Isabella’s post on Instagram, asking for suggestions on what to do in Havana. Of course, I had to be annoying and suggest I AM IN HAVANA TOO CAN WE SHOOT PLEASE LET’S SHOOT OK THANK YOU! (I was’t that obnoxious, but probably close) Within a few hours Isabella messaged me back, and we were finally scheduled to shoot - in Havana, Cuba, of all places in the world.
In the middle of the shoot, I commented to Isabella how grateful I was that she was willing to experiment and play with my weird, quirky ideas. After all, I’m finally getting to photograph Isabella Boylston, and what’s my first thought? How can I keep her identity hidden, emphasizing a weird and quirky image, yet something technically correct ballet-wise? Isabella told me that the reason she actually responded to my DM was two-fold. First, she saw that I had photographed a lot of her friends, and secondly (but most importantly to me), she liked how decidedly weird and quirky my images were - different, she said. I almost stopped the shoot and filmed a commercial right then and there.
I finally got to shoot with Isabella, and thankfully she was as thrilled with this image as I was. Five years in the making, this shoot at last happened, and it occurred in the most serendipitous of ways. As Isabella said, “It was meant to be, in Havana of all places, to make such an iconic image.”
January 25, 2022
