We just  released the fourth in our “About A Photograph™” video series.  In it, photojournalist/artist/author Acey Harper narrates the events behind his vivid image of acrobatic performer Morgaine Rosenthal held aloft on a truck crane only by her mouth.  The video can be found at http://blog.thinktankphoto.com/about-a-photograph/

Said Harper, “She glowed in this field behind her.  And I could photograph her and have two or three minutes of her hanging there by her mouth.”

In Harper’s new book Private Acts: The Acrobat Sublime, photography collides with gravity-defying acts in this sensual and mesmerizing collection of photographs that capture the explosive energy and beauty of bodies. In this extraordinary suite of images, the energy and beauty of nude female and male bodies-devoid of costumes, greasepaint, stage sets, and lighting-are photographed stripped bare (figuratively and literally), revealing the acrobats’ art, craft, and emotions. The beautiful, well-trained, and highly flexible bodies are captured in settings from the natural (beaches in the Marin Headlands, forests in Vermont, the Black Rock Desert) to the gritty urban (a New Jersey steel mill, San Francisco streets, the New York subway).

 “About a Photograph™ video series features some of the world’s leading photographers recounting the stories behind their images that captured global attention.  Each short video focuses on the forces that led up to that perfect moment in time when subject, story, setting, equipment, and photographer converged.