TITLE: Ballet Backstage

In this black and white series, the stage becomes a closed space of transformation, where movement, light, and the body turn into something intangible. All photographs were shot on black and white film, hand developed and printed in the darkroom. The material process is an essential part of the work: the grain, the tonal depth, and the slight imperfections of film echo the fragility and precision of the dancers themselves.

The series looks behind the surface of performance, into the suspended moments between discipline and surrender. These are not images of the final act but of what precedes and follows it, silence, repetition, exhaustion, concentration. The body becomes both instrument and archive, translating emotion into gesture and gesture back into stillness.

Light acts as language. It marks, hides, reveals, and erases. Shadows become partners; movement becomes memory. In one frame the figure disappears into darkness, in another it is defined by a narrow edge of light. Each image reflects a different state of transformation, a dialogue between visibility and disappearance.

Through the physical craft of analogue photography and the restraint of black and white, the work contemplates what remains unseen in dance: the architecture of effort, the solitude within motion, the space between intention and release. It is not a document of performance, but an observation of its inner structure, a meditation on the quiet labor of beauty and the invisible rhythm that connects body, light, and time.

AUTHOR: Daria Troitskaia (Italy)

The Russian aerial and fine-art 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.