About
Marc Santos is a photographer whose work challenges conventional ideas of clarity and focus. Rather than freezing motion, he creates blurred images that evoke mystery, emotion, and the fleeting nature of time. His photographs capture an expanded reality — one where multiple moments coexist in a single frame.
The son of a photographer, Santos picked up his first Kodak Tele-Instamatic at age seven and soon moved through 35mm rangefinders and SLRs before transitioning to digital in 2007 with his first DSLR, a Nikon D70s. His vision is shaped by diverse influences, from the improvisational structures of John Coltrane’s music to the painterly studies of movement by Edgar Degas.
Using long exposures, intentional camera movement, and the interplay of light and fabric, Santos transforms dance into painterly abstraction. He believes that blurriness can awaken the imagination, allowing viewers to experience more than sharpness alone — to feel the echoes of motion rather than its arrest.
Santos’s work has been recognized internationally. His collection The Spirit of Dance was selected for exhibition by jury at the 2018 Utah Arts Festival. His photographs have received honors from the Monochrome Photography Awards, the Prix de la Photographie Paris, and the International Color Awards, which featured his work in their 2024 Professional Winners Book. In 2023, he unveiled new pieces at Art Bath in New York City. His photography has appeared in solo and group exhibitions across the United States and abroad, and is held in several private collections.
Artist Statement
I have always been intrigued by the idea of capturing multiple points in time within a single frame. Photography is often thought of as freezing a decisive moment, yet I am drawn to what happens between those instants — how light, form, and movement can weave together like notes in music. A single note may stay the same, but as the song unfolds its feeling and function change. In the same way, within a single exposure, light can shift roles and meaning, creating visual echoes of motion.
When I began working with dancers, many spoke of their desire to create shapes that would “hang in the air” — fleeting forms that the audience might catch before they dissolved. My work is an attempt to hold those forms within a static frame, not by stilling them, but by allowing them to remain alive.
Through long exposures, blur, and the interplay of body, fabric, and light, I seek to capture the essence of dance as something more than documentation of steps. My images are not records of perfect technique, but meditations on impermanence: the tremor of breath, the suggestion of an arm dissolving into shadow, the body merging with air and landscape.
Each project extends this vision: The Spirit of Dance abstracts performance into rhythm and trace; The Emotion of Perfection reframes ballet’s pursuit of flawlessness into a softer, dreamlike suggestion; Imprint captures the dancer’s presence as light etched into darkness; and Mountaintop Sessions expands the body into elemental connection with sky, wind, and earth.
Together, these works are my way of painting with light — holding onto the spirit of movement while allowing its ephemerality to speak. My hope is that the viewer not only sees dance, but feels its echoes: visceral, fleeting, and alive.