May 2013 - preview of upcoming project.

Introduction photo shoot for my upcoming work for love affair magazine. Keep your eyes open over next two months: you can expect to see a few chapters of swimming pools, watermelons, fifties girls crying over spilt ice cream..

The delight of everyday life. 

In San Francisco April 2013

Search for the Sublime

March 2013

Lewis From Scottish Ballet. (November 2012)

Painted bodies.

Fall 2012

Photography by Emma Hartvig

I miss the desert, terribly. (Photograph from my road trip in California)

Photography by Emma Hartvig

New Project: “Stories from the body, Stories from the stage”

Ballet. This subject is not unfamiliar to me – I have danced for many years and have an endless passion for everything associated with this world of performance. I therefore decided to take a rather challenging approach to my photography style, as I felt comfortable with the research of my subject. Whilst looking at all the great dancers – Isadora Duncan, Pina Bausch, Pavlova and Nijinsky – I realised that I was very interested in these black and white, harsh photographs of bodies in angles only a dancer could do. I started to research Man Ray, Lillian Bassman and Alexey Brodovitch. The grainy, feminine, erotic black and white photographs that reached that fine line between pain and pleasure. These are the repeating scenes within the world of ballet.

So I made a book, with following introduction:

“Light, silence. I am an origami, my shapes will not falter. No, I will push and vividly move: despite my flaws I will deliver. These precise movements we master: it is the elegance we pretend we’re after.

The body, in motion, but broken. I hold myself like a swan being born. Painful pleasures, tearing me from my morality; I am a prisoner to my own body. Other days I am an actress, a character and life is a film, a constantly repeating scene.

Search in vain. The nature of dance is to exist for only a moment; acting like it’s effortless. I push myself against the walls; towards the stage. Silently battle my presence with the absence.

The body blooms like a petal. The paying price for an emotional experience; perfection has to be the key. I pound with the earth’s rotation, tiptoe at its thick melancholy – whoever has light feet, runs even over mud and dances as on swept ice.”

Photography by Emma Hartvig