Ysabel Garcia is a fourth-year student earning a double major in dance choreography and performance, and law and society. Garcia was first introduced to photography through a class at her performing arts high school.
“I found it inspiring to take pictures of my peers who were dancing. I loved capturing the beautiful ephemeral moments that happened within a dance phrase or improvisation exercise,” says Garcia, “the initial muse that got me interested in photography!”
Garcia adds, “You don’t need fancy equipment to be a photographer. A lot of my beautiful photos have been taken off my iPhone, and my DSLR camera is a super old model. All you need to get started is a vision.”
Smartphone cameras have seen big enhancements in recent years. With the improvement in camera quality and convenience, major online learning platforms such as Skillshare and Coursera even offer smartphone photography courses.
“One of the biggest challenges as a photographer is finding your voice and style,” Garcia explains. “With the oversaturation of pictures in the digital age of media, it can be difficult to identify your artistic identity and what you want to create and capture. Thankfully, I was able to find that by amalgamating my love for dance and photography.”
Garcia confides that her biggest success is having her work recognized by Michelle Bylow, the executive director of Raw Artists Canada, who invited her to present her work at the PROTOTYPE showcase.
RAW Artists Canada aims to present independent talents from various artistic genres. Their showcases feature curated artists in over 70 cities from around the world.
“My showcase will be a combination of all my best work throughout my years of photographing dancers. Many of my photos actually feature dancers from the dance program here at York!
“No two of the photos I’m presenting look alike because I don’t follow a particular algorithm — I shape my shoot around the particular dancer I’m working with and aim to capture their energy and movement within my pictures. It’ll be a diverse collection of all different kinds of dance photos I’ve accumulated over the years,” Garcia explains.
PROTOTYPE will also present visual art, makeup artists, tattoo artists, film directors, and live performances from dancers and musicians.
To get tickets, follow this link.
