San Francisco Symphony — Editorial Portrait Photography Revisited
San Francisco Symphony — Returning to an Institution
. A Revisit, and What It Reveals
Returning to a subject you have photographed before is one of the more interesting challenges in portrait work. There is a familiarity that can open doors — a subject who remembers you, an institution that has already granted access — but that familiarity can also close off the alertness that makes first-encounter photography sharp. The photographer's task in a revisit is to find what has changed, and to see the familiar with new eyes.
The San Francisco Symphony, based at Davies Symphony Hall in Hayes Valley, is one of the world's great orchestras — an institution with a history of artistic adventurousness, from the long tenure of Michael Tilson Thomas, who transformed the orchestra's relationship to American music, through to its current programming. To photograph within that world is to engage with an institution that takes its artistic identity seriously.
. The Rhythms of an Orchestra's Working Life
An orchestra's daily life is not what audiences see from the auditorium. Rehearsals, sectionals, the backstage negotiation of a complex schedule, the particular culture that develops in an ensemble of over one hundred musicians who have played together for years — these are the environments that produce the most interesting portrait material. The musician absorbed in a difficult passage, the conductor moving through the orchestra during a break, the instrument cases open backstage before a performance.
Marc Olivier Le Blanc's editorial portrait work with the San Francisco Symphony looks for these moments: the images that convey the work behind the performance, the craft that audiences experience as something apparently effortless.
. Performing Arts Portrait Photography in San Francisco
The San Francisco Symphony, along with the San Francisco Opera and San Francisco Ballet, forms the core of one of the most significant performing arts ecosystems in the United States. Marc Olivier Le Blanc has photographed across this ecosystem — musicians, conductors, administrators, and the institutions themselves — as part of an ongoing practice of arts and culture editorial photography in the Bay Area.
For performing arts portrait commissions in San Francisco and the Bay Area, Marc is available throughout the year. Get in touch to discuss your project.
