About the Book

Release Date: August 15, 2026 – ISBN: 979-8-9964524-0-8

Skin and Grace began with a simple question: what does masculinity look like when movement stops?

I traveled across Cuba to work with professional ballet dancers, seeking not performance but stillness—the moments between rehearsals, after exertion, when discipline remains inscribed on the body but no longer needs to announce itself. In these quiet intervals, the body becomes less an instrument than a record: of years of repetition, sacrifice, resistance, and desire.

The project unfolded over days spent traveling, rehearsing, eating, and living alongside the dancers. Rather than photographing ballet, the work photographs the lives shaped by it. The images are constructed, yet they emerge from relationships built over time, allowing gesture and presence to replace performance.

The accompanying documentary extends this encounter. The dancers speak candidly about their beginnings, ambition, sexual orientation, the experience of coming out, and the complex negotiation of pursuing ballet in a culture where traditional ideas of masculinity remain deeply rooted. Their voices reveal that strength and vulnerability are not opposites, but conditions that often exist within the same body.

The journey itself changed the work. Originally conceived as a dialogue between five dancers and five athletes, unforeseen circumstances transformed the project into something more intimate. What remained was not the project I had planned, but the one Cuba allowed to exist. From that unexpected path emerged Skin and Grace I, while encounters with younger students at the Escuela Nacional de Ballet revealed the beginning of a second chapter still in the making.

This first volume is presented as a 96-page hardcover photobook, combining black-and-white and color photographs, accompanied by a 60-minute documentary film scheduled for release in Fall 2026. The first edition is limited to 600 copies.