Christopher Jones

Limited Edition Archival Pigment Prints

Dance Portraits

Christopher Jones has been photographing dance in both theatres and in his studio for over a decade, and has studied with leading dance photographers Rose Eichenbaum, Lois Greenfield, and Christopher Duggan.

His work has been featured in the Washington Post and Dance Magazine, and has been used extensively in promotional materials for the Martha Graham Dance Company, Jessica Lang Dance, the Limon Dance Company, Compania Irene Rodriguez amongst others, and in the personal portfolios of a number of leading modern dancers.

“I love dance… above all because it is such a visual, emotional and ephemeral art form, combining extraordinary grace and physicality with exceptional artistry, both individually and collectively. The intensity and beauty of the emotion of each moment in dance, that is often breathtaking or heartbreaking, is exquisite and gone in the blink of an eye. That was what led me to explore becoming a photographer – initially focused on capturing the emotion of those moments in the theatre, and from there creating portraits in my studio that are my own artistic creations, collaborating with these amazing artists”  --- Christopher Jones

In the spring of 2024, I traveled to the Andes and embarked on the project that is the subject of these images. This time I was 2600 miles north of Patagonia and 8000 feet higher. My 500-mile journey took me from the Atacama Desert in northeastern Chile into southwestern Bolivia.

Prior to this visit, I had primarily focused on portraits of professional dancers. Portraits that were intimate and personal,highlighting each subject’s uniqueness as an individual and an artist - not as a performer.

Beginning in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, I crossed into Bolivia at the border crossing at Hito Cajones. From there, I traveled north, through the Eduardo Averoa National Reservation and along the eastern spine of the Andes. The variety of landscape was simply breathtaking: volcanoes, lakes, salt marshes, hot springs, lagoons, sand dunes and desert. My adventure concluded at Salar de Uyuni; the largest continuous salt flat in the world. The salt flats, desert and mountains have an otherworldly presence. Wide open spaces stand in stark but symbiotic juxtaposition with the grandeur of the volcanoes - at once exquisitely beautiful, yet barren and deeply inhospitable to human existence.

United by the strength and subtlety of their color palette, each location varied dramatically in topography and geology. And each region had its own idiosyncratic spiritual sensibility that affected me profoundly.

Another dominant unifying factor was the quality of the high-altitude light, whose ethereal purity grew as I traveled from 8000 feet above sea level in the Atacama, to 16,000 feet in the Altiplano of Bolivia. These were scenes that felt like they had descended from their own special place in the heavens.