Jordan Matter, that is.
Mr. Matter is a photographer who recently released a book, Dancers Among Us.
The trailer, which I first saw on Janet Reid’s blog a few days ago,* blew me away:
So I investigated.** And found several more videos revealing how some of the photos in the book came to be taken. This one in particular involved some foreshadowing:
He blogs about this one here. In fact, if his book is only a fraction as fascinating as his blog, I need to buy one for everyone on my holiday lists and two for me. I lost an hour and a half going through his archives yesterday, and regret nothing.
His Vimeo channel*** also features a terrific—and slightly longer—video about a shoot he did for the Paul Taylor Dance Company’s 2012 Moving! campaign. It’s amazing and weird in the best way and Mr. Matter’s enthusiasm and powers of persuasion are undeniable—as you can see from this look at how he set up one of the shots for Dancers Among Us:
I don’t know if my awe for Mr. Matter’s work is in part because I’m personally incapable of taking a reliably focused image of anything but my own thumbs, but I’m pretty sure most of it is about his talent and skill and sheer, obvious joy in his art.
What an inspiration!
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*And if you didn’t, why aren’t you reading her blog?
**Okay, investigate implies that I had enough brain function at the time to do much more than click through to another pretty video and stare at it over endless mugs of hot tea and wads of truly disgusting tissues before hitting the button for another one, like a particularly contagious lab rat craving alfalfa pellets. But I did manage to bookmark most of it and, I think, thank Ms. Reid for solving two problems on my Christmas Impossible list.
***He has a Youtube Channel, too—check out the shoot at Grand Central Station and St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Earful of Cider 