Matthew Brookes

For his first book, photographer Matthew Brookes has turned his lens upon the professional male ballet dancers of Paris. Over the course of a year, he took these dancers out of their regular environment of rehearsals and performances and photographed them in a raw space in which they were allowed to explore the physicality of dance in its purest form. This series of portraits depicts the dancers' responses upon being asked to interpret birds falling from the sky. The introduction is by Parisian prima ballerina Marie-Agnès Gillot, who has worked with these dancers over the years and watched them grow and develop. Brookes was born in England, grew up in South Africa, and is presently based between Paris and New York.