ENTRY DESCRIPTION
This photograph was taken backstage at the Leonid Yacobson Ballet Theatre in Saint Petersburg. It is part of an ongoing analogue project about the quiet moments behind performance.

Shot on black and white film, hand developed and printed in the darkroom, it reflects my interest in discipline, fragility, and concentration. I work with film to stay close to a slower rhythm that matches the pace of ballet.

The dancer is stretching before going on stage. The pose is not for the audience but for herself. In this pause, beauty and exhaustion coexist. The image is about the hidden side of movement, the preparation and silence that make performance possible.

AUTHOR
The Russian documentary and portrait photographer, Daria Troitskaia, was born in Saint Petersburg, brought up in Vienna, and is now living in Milan, Italy.

Formally trained at an art school and well-versed in graphic and web design, she has also worked as an art director before she turned to photography full-time. Guided by her continuous interest in photography on a practical and a theoretical level, she completed several courses in photography, among them the "Sotheby's course Art as Global Business”, to enhance her skills in photography and art.

After releasing "Maltese Exposures", a book with street photography motives of Malta in 2020, she is now working on several photography projects. In one of them, she takes aerial shots of Mediterranean landscapes. In these photographs, unusual compositional solutions in the landscape views are key: instead of reproducing touristic views, the project is inspired by abstract paintings. Troitskaia plans to expand this project to other locations as soon as possible.

Apart from shooting and learning photography, Troitskaia is also interested in the cameras themselves: she has assembled an impressive collection of cameras and enjoys experimenting with different equipment.

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