SKIN, and Grace — Episode I
Gazing Soft
Book and Film
I arrived in Cuba intending to photograph five professional dancers, drawn to a grace I had previously known only through screens and fleeting digital fragments. Four ultimately became the subjects of this book and documentary.
I wanted to photograph their bodies, of course—but more than that, I wanted to discover what remains when movement stops. I arrived with a question: what does masculinity look like once ballet has already shaped it, in a country where the body is at once dance, resistance, and identity?
David joined the Cuban group from Bucaramanga. A companion in many of my projects, he has become a steady presence in the work. William and Andrés were meant to come as well, but both withdrew at the last moment—a quiet reminder that every creation balances on desire, possibility, and chance.
Kelly, Cuban-born and the organizational heart of the journey, guided us through an island both rigorous and vulnerable, where written and unwritten rules shape every step. The crew was small: Lena behind the video camera, with Michel and Melissa recording sound. We worked through tropical viruses, sudden fevers, decaying dance halls, and a beauty that survives through sheer stubbornness.
The original question soon became a series of conversations—about family, independence, and the daily negotiation of being watched, judged, and understood. These men had given their lives to dance, a devotion the world around them still regards with suspicion—ballet least forgiven of all.
Then something unplanned happened: several of the dancers spoke openly on camera about sexuality, love, and coming out. What began as an inquiry into masculinity became something more personal. Without my having intended it, these conversations became the emotional center of the film.
We began in Havana: on its streets and inside the Escuela Nacional de Ballet, where bodies moved beneath faded vaults and windows crossed by ancient light. Then we traveled south—to waterfalls, beaches, and towns suspended in time. Illness, withdrawals, and absences repeatedly reshaped the journey, forcing the project to be reinvented as it unfolded.
The 60-minute documentary allows the four dancers to speak at length and in their own words: how they began dancing, what their commitment has cost them, and, for some, the experience of coming out. We also see them moving without choreography or an audience—four men dancing in a spare room or in the current beneath the waterfall at El Nicho simply because dancing is what they do.
The photographs made alongside these conversations occupy a different register. They hold the body in the stillness between one position and the next. Printed by hand in the darkroom as silver-gelatin photographs, they insist on the body’s material presence before it becomes interpretation.
The book is dedicated to them.
96 pages and 77 photographs, primarily black-and-white with a small selection in color. Hand-finished binding with turquoise-sprayed edges.
Published by Artfineline, 2026.
First copies expected in mid-August 2026.
$80
ISBN 979-8-9964524-0-8
The work continues: Episode II — The Becoming
