Nir Arieli

Nir Arieli is an Israeli-born photographer based in New York whose practice centres on the dancing body as a site of collective identity and emotional architecture. Working with leading contemporary dance companies — including Batsheva Dance Company, Nederlands Dans Theater 2, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, and Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater II — he creates images that function simultaneously as portraiture, sculpture, and document. His FLOCKS series, for which he is internationally recognised, examines proximity, interdependence, and the silent structures formed when bodies share space.

Arieli does not photograph movement — he photographs what remains when movement ceases. Bodies at rest, in contact, in collective stillness. The choreography is invisible; what the camera finds is its residue: skin, weight, breath held between one phrase and the next.

Batsheva Dance Company · Nederlands Dans Theater 2 · Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet · Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater II · Paul Taylor Dance Company · Complexions Contemporary Ballet

The New York Times · Vogue · Dance Magazine · The Guardian · Haaretz · Time Out New York · The Forward

Solo: Gazon Rouge Gallery (Tel Aviv) · Anastasia Photo (New York) · Galerie Esther Woerdehoff (Paris)
Group: Dance Camera West (Los Angeles) · Moving Stories Festival (London) · International Dance Film Festival (New York)

Arieli does not photograph dance — he photographs its aftermath. Bodies in collective stillness, skin as landscape, proximity as the only choreography that remains. His FLOCKS series, made with Batsheva, NDT2, Cedar Lake, and Alvin Ailey II, is among the most significant bodies of dance photography of the last decade. Editions of 3, 5, and 8 — the smallest are already closed.