Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeff and Kay McLean.
Jeff and Kay, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
We are dance photographers. Our photography is our art, not our business. We both have day jobs (yawn), but on weekends we collaborate with the most extraordinary athlete-artists, stars all. Since we don’t depend on this to put bread on the table we are free to work with who we want, when we want, with the only consideration being how great it is artistically.
For us, art, society and community are intertwined, we are also political activists. The best of our work is when it is not only beautiful but socially relevant. We have a group of like minded people from the dance community that we work with organizing events focused on issue in our communities. San Diego is where we live, that is our community, but dance is our community too, and dance is everywhere.
One of our events was a ballet that was performed on both side of the border wall simultaneously, it was a very complicated project, we needed permits from homeland security and on the U.S. we needed dancers to make a long walk to get to Border Friendship Circle in Border Field State Park where the U.S. side of the performance was. Counter intuitively the Mexican side is easy to get to, they drove right to it. It was a very beautiful event, we have a drone video of it on our Instagram highlights if you want to see it 🙂
We live in San Diego so we primarily work here, but we also travel internationally, recently we made a few trips to Cuba. Cuba has one of the top ballets in the world. The dancers for Ballet Nacional de Cuba are at the pinnacle of ballet. We worked with many of the dancers there, including several first soloists and principal dancers.
We aren’t dance snobs by any means, we work with kids all of the time. Young dancer bring an exuberance and innocence that really shows in photographs. We work mostly with ballet and contemporary dancers, but also with acrobats and contortionists. Anyone that has a beautiful performance and is interesting, and most importantly, nice.
Jeff here now, I started in photography as soon as I could afford to buy a camera, that was in the film camera days. I have been shooting regularly since. About 5 years ago I was looking for a new photography project and saw some really good dance photography on Instagram. I was blown away by the technical aspects required of the photographer and how that had to sync precisely with the technical aspects of dance, and of course the subjects are both extraordinary athletes and beautiful humans. I was a huge challenge, I knew nothing about dance, I bought some books on ballet and dove in, I’ve never looked back.
Kay here now, I enjoy spending time outside, we work at at the beach a lot. I love working with young dancer in particular, I just love kids. One of the best parts of this project is that Jeff and I work together, we travel together, we have had some really amazing adventures, we have made so many beautiful friends and we are always talking about what new adventures we should try.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There have been some scary moments, once in Cuba we were stopped by the secret police in the middle of a ballet shoot. The guy was really angry, he was yelling at us in spanish using words I couldn’t keep up with. We were at the Havana University. We were very fortunate that day to have had a Cuban friend along with us, she had attended that university and knew the administration. Our friend argued with him a bit, then told us to sit, don’t go anywhere and give him all your documents. Even though we had a Cuban Journalist permit that allowed us to shoot, we would have been kicked out of the country that day if our friend wouldn’t have been with us.
Another time in Cuba we were shooting with ballet dancers at a world heritage site and Kay got Dengé Fever from a mosquito bite.
Dancers have been uniformly gentle and kind, generous people, but some other photographers, really hate us, they feel that if we are shooting dancers for free, that we are harming their livelihood by undercutting rates. While I understand their frustration, I cannot understand their logic, would a professional singer get mad at someone singing for free on the sidewalk?
Tell us about your work – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We specialize in dance photography, it is our mission, our passion, we are consumed by dance. There is always a long list of dancers that want to work with us. It’s not a matter of trying to find dancers, it’s a matter of finding the right dancers. Without the constraints imposed by being in the photography business, we are free to focus on the art aspects of the work. Does art have to be political? Some say yes, to be relevant you must be political, we believe that. We have been deeply affected by the racial inequalities in society and our community.
We have a pretty big audience on Instagram. We feel that we have a stage, so we feel we have a moral obligation to confront social issues, to try to make our communities better. Just like many other facets of society, dance has a race problem, dance is mostly lily white. Addressing that directly, with the intention of trying to make a difference, to change perception, we have for years worked with black and brown dancers. Our goal has been to try to normalize brown faces in the dance world by consistently posting fabulous brown dancers. The racial problems in dance are similar to the racial problems in society as a whole, dance classes are expensive, dance photographers are expensive so income inequality matters. The vast majority of young dancers out there are part of a two person team, mom and daughter. Having a parent that can completely devote themselves to the dancers development is the norm. So family structure, job opportunities, it all matters.
We were deeply moved by the George Floyd killing, we recently organized a B.L.M protest march and dance performance. We feel like if our art can make a small difference to make our communities better, we must do that.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Our platform is Instagram. As a software engineer I am fascinated by intersection of technology, art and society that social media operates in. Anyone that has spent any time on social media knows that it is a double edged sword. Building a following means that you have a wider audience, but if your actions are determined by trying to create a bigger following you have lost your way.
For us, we know that having a large following is a gift, but it is also a responsibility. We often do things with the full knowledge that we will lose hundreds or even thousands of followers. Every social activist campaign we engage in, hundreds drop off, we understand, but we don’t care.
Since being adopted by the dance community we have come to know some of the most wonderful people you can imagine, lovely people that have made this journey worth any cost. Success for us is working with some of the most gifted dance artists in the world and being treated as an equal. Being accepted in that rarified air of elite athletes and inspiring artists, is humbling. We pinch ourselves at times! Seriously how is it possible that we are allowed to move in these circles? We’ll take all of it we can get.
Contact Info:
- Email: lightheart.danceart@gmail.com
- Instagram: @lightheart.danceart
Image Credit:
Keliah Peterson, Liliana Lizalde, Jordon Nataé, Akeelah Duffy, Diego Tapanes Valdes, Marcel Gutierrez Morales, Fabiana Perez, Alex Andrada, Schenley Elizabeth
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