Staley-Wise Gallery in New York opened last Thursday their new exhibition “Underwater” featuring work by Howard Schatz and Michael Dweck. In our exclusive film Howard Schatz takes you through the stories behind his iconic photographs and for the first time unveils some of the secrets behind their making.
Howard Schatz first established a following in the 1990s with two collections of underwater photography, Water Dance and Pool Light. With H2O, Schatz takes the magic of weightlessness and the beauty of dance to new heights. Whether in single portraits or as part of a larger, spectacular ballet, his dancers are as utterly elegant as they are phantasmagorical. They appear before the camera as though borrowed from a dream.
In 2007, Bulfinch Press published the third in Schatz’s series of explorations of imagery made on, over and underwater. It is a breathtaking feat of underwater photography and a visionary celebration of movement and form. Working with uncommonly graceful and aquatically gifted dancers, models, and performers, photographer Howard Schatz has found joyous inspiration underwater. The images in H2O take advantage of water’s unique properties- light, clarity, buoyancy, and reflectivity-to create a delightfully serene and otherworldly aesthetic. At once uncanny, lithe, athletic, and mysterious, the figures in Schatz’s photographs transform the pool into studio and stage.
EXHIBITION
Underwater
Howard Schatz and Michael Dweck
From July 11th to August 29th, 2014
Staley Wise Gallery
560 Broadway
New York 10012
United States
