There was a time when Sundays felt different. The day itself had a specific sense of ‘Sunday’ to it that was not there on all the other days. All the shops were shut. Streets abandoned. Traffic lights changing for no one. Television was sleepy, and dinner always early. Sunday had a certain light to it and a sense of detachment from regular weekday life. These were days prior to the always-open-internet, and, depending on where in the world you are, this might still be the Sunday you know. 

For big-city dwellers, the year which just passed brought with it something of a skewed reminder of those olden days; 2020 became ‘A Year of Sundays.’  Work and plans and regularities put on hold. Weeks rolling into one another and months both suspended and flying by. Time distorted and the present harder to remain in. For many, these were days in which it was a challenge to hold on to oneself. To hold on to one’s deadlines and dreams. To hold on to one’s art. 

Kristin Gallegos’ new book of photography, Disappear Here, captures, all at once, the beauty and challenges of isolation and routine and the pursuit of the craft. The first installment in the series follows Cora Keegan, a longtime muse and friend of the photographer, playing The Dancer. A visual diary of a day-in-the-life, which could easily span a few hours or a few years to the audience’s clandestine view. 

As though invited yet undercover, we watch as the ballerina wakes and prepares, rehearses and performs, and rests and contemplates. It’s a solitary world, whether she be physically surrounded by peers or entirely alone. It’s a world Kristin knows well. 

Born in Long Beach, California, classical ballet became her source of inspiration and expression from a young age. She spent most of her youth dancing in major schools across the US. These were pivotal adolescent and teenage years lived deep in a world of incomparable art and discipline. It’s a world that demands perfection, often the kind not within one’s control, in which you’re constantly striving for ultimate achievement while aware of its subsequent demise; a dancer’s reward is primarily visceral and entirely fleeting.

The realization at 17 that her life might not be ballet but had to be New York was a difficult but powerful decision. “It was my first heartbreak because ballet was my first love,” she tells me one (Sunday) afternoon in her LA apartment (which she now calls home since moving from NYC in 2019). Stepping away from mechanical practice while maintaining the same sense of determination, it seems only natural that Kristin’s transition to photography and her approach to creating work is of the organic sort. 

The beauty in the aesthetics of ballet: the style of the dance-wear herself and her idols like Leslie Browne, Gelsey Kirkland, and Natalia Makarova donned, coupled with her understanding of bodies and the way they move, stuck deeply in the core of the artist and carried with her through her 20s and into her career as a photographer. 

A strong aesthetic surrounds Kristin’s being in general, and it was the fun and free aspect of photography that was the catalyst. It was less about being into the technicalities of photography and more about an interest in the subjects. After experimenting with portraits of friends using polaroids and disposable cameras as a teenager, she moved to New York City in 2004 and began a successful career as a make-up artist, as well as holding a strong presence in the nightlife scene as a DJ:

“I was working, constantly, doing that for many years. Traveling a lot and just really consumed with it. I started to lose interest and get burned out by the fashion world. I felt creatively stifled. I was so tired from also doing nightlife; just really exhausted, and thought, I need something for myself. Just something else that’s not about making money, just about having fun.”

Armed with a Contax T2 35mm camera and surrounded by a slew of equally beautiful and interesting people, her ability to capture came naturally and quickly began to get noticed. “I was shooting my closest friends.” she says. Starting with small fashion brands drawn to the 60s and 70s aesthetic that Kristin is so effortlessly able to offer and developing with publications such as Purple-Sex and Playboy, the career followed the heart. Knowledge of lighting and technique came organically with time, but the raw essence of her work holds. 

Shooting primarily on film remains her preference and plays a large part in the overall outcome regardless of picture quality. She explains that while finding the colors and grain in film more pleasing, its the spontaneity and element of surprise that thrills her: 

“I don’t want it to feel so perfect. I was on fashion and commercial shoots for over a decade, and I was turned off by this kind of work. Someone’s standing there, and five people are fixing things on them (the hair or clothes) or touching them every two seconds and then analyzing on a screen after taking a couple shots. I just didn’t want my work to be anything like that. I wanted it to feel a little less staged.”

There is a certain flow between photographer and subject, a dance, if you will, that when both are comfortable and undisturbed allows for moments of truth to be captured.

The build of offering and acceptance. The call and response. The intuitive adjustments to each other’s needs. It’s these kinds of scenarios in which Kristin is most inspired, and it’s her desire to generate more of these that produced her current personal work. She is on a quest for both freedom and control, things rarely allowed to co-exist; like the dancer, it’s the meticulous preparation and creative planning that allows for passion to surge.

The concept for Disappear Here arose upon Kristin’s rediscovery of an old pair of pointe shoes and a leotard of hers. It was also heavily influenced by the 1977 movie ‘Turning Point’. While in part being a homage to her former life as a dancer and her love of cinema, the rest of the series (the details of which currently remain under wraps) is more so a cinematic study of the in-between moments of a day in the life; a life in some kind of isolation. Each limited-edition book, inspired by a different movie, will introduce a new muse in the role of a new character, based either on an aspect of Kristin’s life or a hero of hers. 

This first installment on ‘The Dancer’ was already in development when COVID-19 changed the face of work for those in creatives industries but the limitations and schedule that the lockdown in Los Angeles enforced served it well. As 2020 shone a light on the comfort in the shared experience and the loneliness of constraint, it allowed an opening for Kristin to lean further into the subject of isolation and monotony. 

These are qualities that are inherently there in dance and particularly in ballet; the repetition of doing the same steps over and over, day after day. The act of the dance always being in their own mind and body, despite having a shared routine and process with a stage of other dancers, each in their own heads and bodies. The creators chosen medium is an expression of their individuality. 

“I feel very much isolated in my own creativity when conceptualizing and especially with the way I work: I like to work alone. Because of my background in fashion I'm capable of doing the makeup and hair and styling and sort of creating a whole thing. I prefer it, being one on one with my muse. I feel like I'm in my own little world.” 

The way that the artist shall always work alone is also true of human existence:

“To have creative full creative control and put out a product of exactly what I want to put out there, that’s the most rewarding. It’s a representation of you.” Kristin explains.

The title, Disappear Here, is borrowed from a phrase repeated in one of Kristin’s favorite novels, ‘Less Than Zero’ by Bret Easton Ellis.  It’s a novel that documents a lost generation in early 1980s Los Angeles, and the symbolic sentiment lingers heavily in Kristin’s book. 

There is a timelessness to the photos, a sense of becoming lost or ceasing to be visible. To no longer exist or go missing in this place. In the way that this feels true for The Dancer, whom we observe, it applies similarly to the viewer, who, as a recipient of the image, is in their own individual way, a participant in the dance; the audience plays both the reaction and the mirror. In some images, The Dancer appears grounded in a world that continues to move on without her. Other times, she’s moving alone in air that is stuck. 

There are glimpses of the painful reality hidden under pretty appearances. A sense of play in the shadows and light, who slow dance amongst themselves and affectionately around their principal. The space demands its honor of the being. The walls feign boundlessness, and where frames fade into darkness of paper pages, the edges become uncapturable.

While movement like this is not easy to contain, days like this are easier to relate to. And as days become lives and lives succumb to years, there lives an artist in us all who strives for the minutes.