One of the exhibitions I most enjoyed visiting during my all-too-brief stay in beautiful Arles, France to take in the Les Rencontres D’Arles de la Photographie was not in the festival at all. Instead, Valentina Benigni’s solo exhibition “Dancing Vulnerability” was a part of the concurrent Festival Off Arles. 

With 26 exhibitions, some quite large, scattered around Arles, Les Rencontres D’Arles did not leave me much time in my brief stay to check out other shows, many of which I hurriedly passed by. However, Valentina’s exhibition announcement posted on the street featuring a brilliant photograph of what looked like a flamenco dancer with skirt awhirl (image above) cried out to me. 

Fortuitously, a woman standing at the entrance to the BELLE [bel]n.m. BEAU [bo]n.f. Gallery introduced herself as the author of the works on display, the only photographer I met in Arles. Her show was indeed full of dance photographs, mostly of flamenco, each compelling, beautifully lit and composed, something most difficult to achieve when photographing fast-moving dancers. Moreover, her work expresses the stillness at the heart of powerful dance and, as the exhibition title alludes to, the vulnerability of the artist and the strength underlying the ability to share that vulnerability with the audience. As a frequent concert and sometimes dance photographer myself, Valentina’s images are the kind and quality that I aspire to capture.

We began talking and discovered that not only did we share similar goals in photographing dance, but some aspects of our life journeys had also been similar. Like me, she had always loved photography but had not taken it up professionally until recently. Rather, she had aspired to a career in dance, a practice to which I had also devoted myself for about 8 years after moving to NYC. 

Unlike me, her relationship with dance began very early. She says, “It seems that I started dancing before I spoke! When I was 4 years old, I started taking dance classes, and in parallel, when I was 5 years old, I started photography with my parents’ camera. 2 parallel passions, but both channels of expression and understanding of my emotions.”

Repeated injuries finally forced her to give up dancing. To meet her needs, and to satisfy her parents’ concerns for her stability and future, she entered finance but soon realized that in trying to please others, she gained nothing of substance and was losing herself. 

When the pandemic hit, she found room to realize that she needed to center her life around her creativity. Trusting herself, she quit her job in Paris and moved to southern France, determined to make a living from photography.

And from there, she says, “the transformation began. Drawers that had been closed a lifetime for fear of rejection opened and found a way into me. That vulnerability that just needed to be let free to express itself, that creativity that had remained caged, was now free.”

On a trip to Madrid, she found flamenco being performed on a stage in a theater, and it was like recognizing a long-lost friend. “Given the moment of uncertainty [of the pandemic], the dancers were dancing like it was the last time, with a strength and energy that moved me. And they reminded me of that last time I was on stage, aware that I would never return.  I was taking pictures and crying. And then, in those photos, I discovered much more than a performance: there was myself, my emotions, my transformation.”

I am sharing this biographical material about Valentina with you so that you might understand why she can capture what she does in her performance photos: that awareness that a mature performer has of being on the precipice, in free fall, surrendering control without careening out of control, of being still without stopping, fully alive and open and present, inviting the audience to see what she is experiencing, exposed, vulnerable and strong because of it, knowing the audience also feels this strength and aliveness. Valentina experienced this as a dancer, recognized its importance, and understood that this is what must be conveyed through her photos. She knows what to look for and trained herself technically to capture it when she sees it.

For example, in the image to the left, Valentina captures the end of a performance. Although we cannot see the dancer’s face, we can feel her emotion through her body language:  back slightly arched, arms raised to the sky, fingers extended. It is a position of vulnerability assumed with extreme confidence, in triumph. We can feel the spotlight shining brightly on her. The way it catches her profile makes it seem as if she is glowing, accentuating her emotion. The fact that she is photographed from behind and to the side tells us that Valentina is situated in the wings of the stage, a place reserved only for insiders, adding to the sense of intimacy. This, in turn, conveys that Valentina has established a relationship with the dancer. She is trusted, and Valentina has rewarded her trust by capturing the money shot, the precise moment when all of the built-up drama and emotion of the flamenco performance is cathartically released, compelling the audience’s rapturous applause. We cannot even see the audience, but we can imagine them there applauding. It is thus an intensely intimate moment and photograph — even though we can see no one’s face. This allows it to take on a universality. The dancer is every flamenco dancer, every artist. And we are left space to take it in and imagine and feel it for ourselves. 

Valentina shares her story alongside her photos because she appreciates that her journey might resonate with and empower others. Many of us, at some time or another, have felt as though our happiness, our ability to be our best selves, has been lost when something has been taken from us. Valentina wants us to recognize that, as creative beings, we can always find new ways to experience and share the experience of being alive, being ourselves, being at home. 

Society’s emphasis on conformity and avoiding risks often causes us to miss out on the beauty of our uniqueness. “We are so used to wearing masks,” she says. Society teaches us that vulnerability is a weakness, something to be “…avoided out of danger of getting hurt, rather than as a strength…” that allows us “….to explore the authenticity and intensity of life.”   

Valentina’s art reflects the breadth and depth of emotions and energies we all experience and reminds us that we are containers for these experiences and need not fear them. Her art encourages us to value our vulnerability and cultivate our curiosity. It encourages us to let go of comforts and crutches and allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to open up to our feelings and to our inner guidance as well and to follow that guidance into the unknown to discover who we really are and how we can meet the world with the fullness of our being.

Although she’s only been photographing professionally for a few years, Valentina’s photographs have already won numerous awards. You can see more of her work in her photo book, LUZ FLAMENCA, which can be ordered on her web site, and, as it turns out, in a group show at Agora Gallery in New York City from Oct 9 – 15. If you’re in NYC, I encourage you to check out her works there, especially my favorite, Trusting the Rhythm of Change (2024), which you can see in the show advertisement below (but it’s much better to see it printed large!).

https://www.valentina-benigni.com/
@valentinabenigni.photographer