Hey, Hot Shot! Entries: Eric Hart
Covering the Set by Summer ‘07 contender Eric Hart.
When I’m not blogging or slaving away in a busy restaurant, my creative efforts are primarily dedicated to the theater. As an upcoming graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, I was lucky enough to have trained with the Atlantic Theater Company for two years and to have recently visited Prague’s prestigious Academy of Performing Arts.
Today’s contender, Eric Hart is also a man of the theater. Though raised on a farm in Central Pennsylvania, his theater work has driven him all over the place, “from New York City, to Hersheypark, Santa Fe, Louisville, and Ohio.” His massive flickr site serves as a testament to all the places he’s been.
So, what’s a man of the theater doing with a camera?
I bought my camera as a way to document my work as a theatre artist. Though I am largely self-taught as a photographer, my training in scenic and lighting design over the years has benefited me immensely as a photographer.
His photographs offer a satisfying behind-the-scenes sneak peak into the world of theater, but with a heightened sense of artistry in mind. Looking at his photos from the Santa Fe Opera, they seem to mystify the life of a theater artisan, whilst (like any good theater artist, director, or designer) creating a captivating story simply through the use of spatial relationships and lighting.
There’s this exercise we used to do in one of my movement classes called an “Open Viewpoints Session” that comes out of a technique called Viewpoints expanded on by SITI Company founder and director, Anne Bogart in “The Viewpoints Book”. It’s basically a loose-form improvisation where some actors move about the space while others watch, creating a dramatic event based off of impulses garnered by different factors like the actors’ spatial relationships. The point of referencing this improvisation is that while you’re in it or watching it, you naturally tend to create a dramatic story in your head all based on a confluence of events in the moment, like where the actors are in the room, which way they are facing, and whether the sun is shining light upon certain faces or parts of the stage. This is what creating theater is about. While looking at Eric Hart’s photos, that’s what I was doing in my head–attaching dramatic qualities to his subjects based on the way the images were set.
Hart talks about how theater and photography overlap in his work:
I started shooting seriously about three years ago with my first digital camera. I got it to document my own work as a designer and props artisan in theatre, and it quickly expanded to a full time pursuit. I like to capture the people and places that my life in theatre takes me, from my parents’ farm in central Pennsylvania, to New York City; from Louisville, Kentucky to the Santa Fe Opera in New Mexico. I think of my photographs as I think of my job: showing a world backstage which most people only ever catch a glimpse of.
As for the photo I posted above, I just love how epic it looks with that massive blue sheet looming in the background, that guy suspended in mid-air, and the sheet of water sweeping in below him. Mainly it’s that guy caught in mid-air, though. So epic.
That’s all folks. I better see some more new entries tomorrow, since you’re all about to click here and submit your photos to the awesome Summer 2007 edition of Hey, Hot Shot!
