Mikhail Baryshnikov Latvian, b. 27/01/1948

Born in Riga (Latvia) on 1948, Mikhail Nikolaevich Baryshnikov is one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of the 20th century. "For two decades I used a conventional 35mm camera, and practiced traditional landscapes, portraits and travel shots in primarily black and white. I made a point of rejecting obvious opportunities to photograph dance, thinking the results were boring and unnecessary. Then, going through some old books of dance photography - notably Alexey Brodovitch's Ballet, and Paul Himmel's 1954 Ballet in Action - I discovered that abandoning the crystalline image in favor of blurred edges and amorphous figures approximates the excitement of dance in performances.