When Jordan Matter’s Dancers Among Us, a book of photographs that captures dancers posing in unexpected places, was published in 2012, it won high praise. The Washington Post said, “In his shots of dancers in flight on sidewalks and city streets—excitable superheroes among us—Matter has produced a series of minimusicals, frozen in time but full of energy.” And the New York Times said, “In Jordan Matter’s photos, dancers make all the world a stage.” The book is just shy of having 100,000 copies in print, a number as stunning as his photographs for a collection of photography. Now Matter has turned to the stage at night in his new collection, Dancers After Dark (Workman, Sept.), in which he again captures the human form at its most graceful.
In this book, professional dancers pose naked in the midst of life around them and reveal their passion for dance etched in every muscle. More than 100 color and black-and-white photos feature dancers everywhere—including Times Square, Paris’s Notre Dame, a winding street in Amsterdam, a remote castle in the Cotswolds, and, of course, Chicago.
While everyone should “dance like no one is watching,” take note that Jordan Matter is here in McCormick, armed with his camera, and he will be watching. At 2–3 p.m. today, at the Workman booth (1729), he puts down the lens and picks up a pen to sign a limited number of posters (pictured above).
This article appeared in the May 11, 2016 edition of PW BEA Show Daily.
