By Julie Gallagher

Rafael Soldi was grappling with his own creative conflict when the idea to document the dichotomy between an artist’s means and end sprang from an image captured by photographer Stefan Ruiz.

“I was coming from a place where I was really struggling with my work and I didn’t know where I was going or what I was doing,” says the Peruvian national as he looks back on the start of his junior year at the Maryland Institute College of Art. That feeling was reflected in the subject of Ruiz’s image.

“It was a straightforward portrait of a female dancer, and she looked gorgeous, but there was something very telling about her eyes,” Soldi says. “It’s such a beautiful thing when dancers are gliding across the stage—it looks almost effortless—but the preparation for that one very beautiful performance is a very ugly one.”

After extending offers to take portfolio headshots for dancers willing to share their stories, Soldi found willing participants at nearby Towson University. The dancers’ creative endeavors soon became the young photographer’s, as he set off with his camera to capture their vulnerabilities and fulfill his junior seminar project requirements.

Soldi met weekly with two to three dancers. Since he was initially an outsider, some requested another dancer be present during these sessions.

“Sometimes I’d tell them to dance for ten to fifteen minutes so they’d get really tired and then I’d tell them to stop. I’d shoot them right away when they were tired, breathing heavily or not entirely aware of how their body was looking.”

Other meetings involved discussions over coffee about body image and frustrations related to the perception that all dancers have eating disorders.

“They’d say, ‘We’re 18- and 20-year-old girls standing in our tights in a room made out of mirrors,’” Soldi explains. “So it’s not so much about eating as it is about the competition when a group of girls are looking at their own bodies and comparing them to each other’s bodies every day.”  

One of the dancers made a lasting impression on Soldi. By the age of 16, she’d fulfilled her dream of dancing professionally with the world- renowned Vienna Conservatory, but the physical demands became too much. She retired just three years later, before reaching her 20th birthday.

“She was sick and tired of people telling her she was fat and to work harder when in fact she was very skinny,” says Soldi. He illustrates her doleful journey with an image of her holding a picture of her former self, with the dress she no longer fits into hanging in a garment bag in the background.

“It’s the same process in photography, in that it’s not an easy ride to make a body of work,” Soldi adds. “Sometimes things are tough and you have to reinvent yourself. Sometimes you feel like quitting. There were certainly times during this project when I thought, What am I doing? I have to stop this and do something else.”

Despite his uncertainties, Soldi persevered.

His tenacity paid off when he was awarded a solo show at MICA’s Woodward Gallery, but even as he hung his work, Soldi could not yet breathe a sigh of relief. “I wasn’t all that sure that it was done and that I was happy with it,” he says. After gauging the crowd’s reaction, his feelings began to change. “I started to get compliments from my friends and random people who’d come to the opening. Only then did I feel like it was a success and that I could call it done.” Soldi relates his experience to that of the dancers.

“The story ended up being about this really hard journey that takes you to such a beautiful thing,” he sums up. “It was a really tough process that can be ugly at times, but once you’re done, you can see your work on the wall and it’s so worth it.”