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All images © 2006-2022 Audrey Monahan

 

Choreography through a lens. 

When I look through the viewfinder I can't help but see the world as a stage; a dramatic and dynamic setting where visual interpretation can be applied.

The first two decades of my life were spent training for the dance world and the following decades as a dancer and choreographer. I see choreography and photography as very similar artistic expressions using the same principles of staging and design. One is just a frozen moment. It's the same artful organization of elements within a fixed box. Both rely on the use of movement and energy, lines and implied lines, light and shadow, space and negative space, emotions and storytelling (either real or imagined), all created from a stationary point of view. I see the elegance and graceful gesturing of the human form through my dancer's eye and all the classic angles and positioning. Both art forms need to draw in the viewer, keep them engaged, and allow their imagination to participate in the implied story. It is theater through the eye of the camera.

Off stage, the world I live in has always been an old world; a timeless, classic, theatrical world. A world of beauty, centuries old textures, patina, and classical lines. My photography has a time-honored look applied to landscapes, architecture and people alike. I have further shaped my aesthetic sensibilities through the study of European decorative arts and old world travel.  

I am admittedly a dreamer and a romantic, I have an adoring husband, a lovely daughter and son-in-law who are a major force in my life, and I have the most beautiful grandson a camera lens has ever seen.