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Skin. And Grace - Episode I - Gazing Soft
By Igor Mattio
書籍について
Release Date: July 30 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.
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Excerpt from the Book
“I came to Cuba drawn by movement, yet I found myself waiting for stillness. The instant when rehearsal ends, when choreography falls away, and only the body remains. There, discipline becomes visible—not as spectacle, but as memory written beneath the skin.
The dancers speak of ambition, family, desire, and the cost of becoming who they are. Their stories reveal that masculinity is neither fixed nor singular. It is negotiated, questioned, resisted, and continually remade.
The project itself followed the same path. What began as ten men across different worlds became four dancers and, unexpectedly, the first traces of another story. Cuba changed the work as much as the work sought to understand Cuba. Sometimes the project we finish is not the one we imagined, but the one reality patiently reveals.”
About the Author
Igor Mattio is a renowned visual artist who blends photography and drawing to create bold and surreal works. His focus on silver gelatin prints in numbered editions has earned him acclaim in the art world. “Skin. And Under” is his latest project, reflecting his deep desire to capture the authentic and vulnerable states of being.
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