Sofie Bertolini // San Antonio, TX
I love shooting in studio. Though I rarely - if ever - shoot in studio for this Hasselblad Ballet project, I’m constantly shooting in studio for my main, commercial work, and I’m relatively comfortable working with studio lights. That being said, out of the 193 (up to this point) shoots I’ve done, less than five have been in studio. A major point of this project when I started was that I would have a personal ballerina tour guide which would allow me to see whatever city I’m visiting, instead of being cooped up in my hotel room. Don’t get me wrong: I’ll photograph any dancer indoors in a cool looking space, and if push came to shove, would gladly accept a studio shoot over a location shoot if it were one or the other. It’s just that I don’t do that very often: location is king for me.
This particular shoot came inspired via the great Irving Penn, one of the iconic photo legends of the 20th century. One of his more famous images is of a woman, completely covered behind some sort of fabric, an expensive, custom-made dress no doubt. In Penn’s image, no vestige of the subject is visible, minus her fingers. Making it ballet would require at least the pointe shoes to be visible, if not the legs.
When I decided to try a shoot based off this image, I had no idea what Sofie would wear. I didn’t have access to a custom wardrobe designer, so I settled on a $30 king sized flat sheet from your neighborhood Walmart, and hoped I would be able to steam out most of the folded lines. Turns out a king size was too big, and I probably could have settled with a twin.
Using the sheet as a wrap - a sort of Super-Ballerina Woman cape - turned out to be the right usage for this shoot. A far-cry from Penn’s image, if you know his work well enough, you should see the inspiration, from the backdrop selection to the studio lighting. As much as this particular image - this shoot - is an outlier in the entire body of this project, I am quite comfortable with it being included. Perhaps this is a call to do more shoots of this nature. Weird, in-studio… Pennish.
November 8, 2021
