About

Marc Santos is a photographer whose work tests conventional ideas of clarity and focus. He creates blurred images that evoke a sense of motion, emotion, and mystery. His photographs capture an expanded reality with more than one moment in time.

As the son of a photographer, Marc started shooting film at the age of seven, with a Kodak Tele-Instamatic. Soon after progressing through a variety of 35mm rangefinders and SLR’s. In 2007 switched to digital and a Nikon D70s was his first DSLR.

Santos finds inspiration from various sources, including the music of John Coltrane, and the paintings of Edgar Degas. He combines various techniques to achieve desired effects, such as long exposure, motion blur, lens manipulation, and intentional camera movement. He believes that blurriness can stimulate the imagination and the senses of viewers by revealing more than sharpness alone.

Marc was selected by a jury panel to present his collection “The Spirit of Dance” as part of the 2018 Utah Arts Festival in Salt Lake City.  His images have been recognized by several prestigious awards, including Monochrome Photography Awards, and the Prix De La Photographie Paris.  November 2023 Marc unveiled new work, “Ballet From Above,” at Art Bath in New York City. The International Color Awards selected Marc’s work for the Professional Edition of their Winners Book for 2024.   His photography has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and internationally and is held in several private collections.

Artist Statement

I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of capturing multiple points in time within a single frame.  I realized there was a similarity with music, such as when a soloist would weave notes throughout the form of a song.  The note can stay the same, but it would change feeling and function as the music moves around it.  This lead me to think about what it would be like to have light change function within a single camera exposure.  My experiments keep this idea in mind.

When I started working with dancers many of them would express to me that they were trying to make shapes that would “hang in the air.”  Temporary forms that they hoped the audience would be able to see and enjoy. 

My work presented here attempts to hold those shapes within a static frame.