Artist Statement Draft 1

Niko Balkaran’s photos are a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on to make a play successful on stage. For this, he photographed the cast and crew of Hispaniola, an original play written by a York CUNY professor, Harlan Penn. He focused on elements such as composition and color. 

Balkaran took photographs using an iPhone 13 Pro Max and a Nikon D3200 DSLR camera. Some of the compositional techniques used in the images are a mix of depth of field and the rule of thirds. 

Balkaran was inspired to document this process because most only see the stage production rather than the work that led up to that performance. His photos capture the sheer determination and the performers’ joy at perfectly landing lines. 

One of Balkaran’s goals was to focus on a long-term project to learn long-term photography's ins and outs. He was successful in this aspect as he had to shoot his subjects multiple times instead of just one photo shoot. 

The final piece of this project evolved from conception. It was initially meant to be showcased as an installation. However, the images are now compiled in a book and sectioned into chapters. The reason behind changing this is so the audience can better see the steps everyone involved in Hispaniola took to make it a successful production on stage.