€68 / $80, Kehrer Verlag, hardcover, 432 pages, ISBN 9783969001936
In Emotional Waves, Swiss photographer Claude Hofer turns his lens toward the raw, enigmatic world of Butoh and contemporary dance. Over many years and across multiple countries – Japan, Taiwan, Germany, Austria, and the UK – Hofer collaborated with more than a hundred dancers to produce this rich body of work. The result is a 432-page tome of intense black & white photography that transcends traditional performance documentation. These are not just dancers frozen mid-pose, but psychological portraits of transformation – faces in flux, bodies in surrender, identities in motion.
At the heart of Hofer’s approach is trust. The photographs are forged through intimate, improvised sessions rather than rehearsed set-pieces, creating a potent space where the distinction between performance and…
