One year ago I was chosen as a winner of the Ilford Community Grant for my project “ePhemeral”. As a dance photographer this was a gift for me, because it gave me the chance of contacting great dancers of different styles and movement dynamics to work with. For me it also meant a vot of confidence in the value of photographing movement, life, and fleeting moments through the analogue medium. And last but not least, it gave me the chance of exploring a new technique, Film Swap. Keep on reading and discover my journey through this year!

Dancing Through the Lens

I danced for 20 years, and I always say that when I left the stages, I started dancing with the camera. Thanks to the LFORD Grant I’ve had the extraordinary opportunity to work with and photograph some truly incredible dancers that are worldwide recognized, such as Eloy Cojal (CAT) or Mati Casini (IT). Their energy, expression, and physical grace have provided the perfect counterpart to my vision of capturing the ephemeral, those fleeting seconds where dance is pure and unrepeatable. For example, all the shooting with Eloy was made through improvisation. He moved free, and I just captured that moments that won’t be repeated again.

Working on film has also given me a different rhythm. A dancer is used to see itself in the mirror when is on class, and when I work with digital cameras, they can see themselves. This is specially hard for classical ballet dancers. Because everything is different on analogue. The impact of seeing movement frozen is even more poetic and dancers get even more surprised. Most of them have loved the dance photography film experience and have asked me to repeat.

It has been a pleasure working with all this dancers both in the studio and outdoors playing with different cameras and diferent IlFORD film stocks. If you ask me about my favourite, I would say that I love the look of FP4 shot at 400 ISO in the studio and I have used several times obtaining great results in all skin tones. Outdoors I have had a great surprise with Ortho Plus, that I had never shot before.

Darkroom Discoveries & Print Experiments

As part of the grant’s award, I’ve also been able to print in the darkroom. It has been for me an essential step of the process. It has given me the chance of learning and understanding how different ILFORD stocks respond on paper. This hands-on, analogue approach has deepened my appreciation for darkroom work and helped me to identify which ILFORD stocks I prefer both for taking pictures and for printing in the darkroom. I have to say that my work in the darkroom has been possible thanks to Lorena Bernardini from Verde Manganeso Fine Arts Academy in Madrid who has taught me each step of the hand made copy process.

One of the best moments of this year was when in May I had the chance of showing part of the “ePhemeral” project in Valls (CAT), my city. I exhibited there some of the prints that I did in the darkroom and talked about the process. It was incredible to see the reaction of the audience, who didn’t expect that in 2025 there were still people printing as it was done a hundred years ago.

A Creative Collaboration: Film Swap

One of the most enriching parts of this journey has been collaborating with the Taiwanese photographer stablished in Madrid, Weili Chen. She is such a brilliant artist, with lots of sensibility in every shot and a lover of experimenting in analogue, like me. I met her thanks to her work in Cuarto Color Lab, where they have developed and scanned all the pics of the project. One year ago and thanks to the grant I told her that I had the first shooting with one of the dancers and why not doing something different and Film Swapping between us? The result was amazing and it was the beginning of an exciting adventure.

Through this year we have shared lots of rolls and we have discovered that HP5 and all the Delta series are great for film swapping because they give balance to both of the shots. Other stocks like XP2 are not that great for our multiple exposures and have made it difficult to obtain good images.

Exchanging rolls and perspectives allowed us both to push boundaries and to start a new project in parallel to “ePhemeral”. Combining my vision of dance with her photographic sensibility, experimenting with contrasts and exposures and seeing how our different styles interacted has ended in a creative exchange and also in a richer, shared exploration of what analogue dance photography can be.

Our first Photobook using this technique will be presented the 10th April adding this link please? https://cuartocolorlab.com/libros-de-fotografia.html

Sprocket-Rocket---FP4-pushed-2-steps-@duniiapenairanzo

Sprocket-Rocket---FP4-pushed-2-steps-@duniiapenairanzo

What’s Next

With the support from ILFORD Photo’s Community Grant, “ePhemeral” is no longer just a concept. It has become a concrete body of work. Film shot, prints made, collaboration realized. This recognition has given me tools to continue exploring dance, movement, emotion, and the transient beauty of human expression, all through analogue film. Also, it has opened me the doors to a whole world of experimentation through film swap and the project “Harmony on Film” that we are developing with Weili Chen.

I’m deeply grateful to ILFORD for believing in “ePhemeral”, for keeping dance alive and for make me shoot without stopping this year. Also, I want to thank all the dancers who have been involved in the project and my family for helping me in every step of the project. Thank you also to Yen Chen for opening me the doors of his studio in Madrid and let me shooting there. I’m excited to keep shooting, printing, experimenting and sharing these moments of ephemeral beauty with others and for sure, the ILFORD film rolls will be an essential part of my journey.