Victor Jessen photographs

1930-1959

Victor Jessen (1901-1995) was a Danish-born artist, draftsman, and ballet enthusiast who moved to Los Angeles in 1929. He is best known for his moving image work; Jessen secretly filmed hundreds of Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo performances from the 1930s to the 1950s. Jessen would arrive at a performance with his cameras concealed in a briefcase, with a customized "blimp" created to hide and muffle the camera sound, extra film cartridges, and a blind eye from a sympathetic usher. Always trying to get a clear view of the stage, but also a place where he could slyly set up his equipment, Jessen could only record very brief fragments of performances before having to reload and manually wind his camera. Over thirty years, Jessen documented all or parts of over thirty ballet performances, including Coppelia, Les Sylphides, and Gaîté Parisienne.

From 1944 until 1954, Jessen attended and recorded multiple performances of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo's Gaîté Parisienne starring Alexandra Danilova, Frederic Franklin, and Leon Danielian. After painstakingly filming each performance part, he spliced the film strips in order, and he paired it with the secretly recorded audio from a 1954 performance to create a complete recording of the performance. Over ten years, the footage jumps from various camera angles in different theaters, creating a dizzying effect. This montaging technique offers a unique approach to documenting dance.

In addition to his film work, Jessen also created still images from the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo performances. Undoubtedly also made covertly, many with a Leica camera or possibly printed directly from his film strips. These images provide context and documentation of other Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo performances from the 1930s through the 1950s. The photographs, like his films, are impressionistic, grainy, and blurry. While caused by the physicalities of his camera and enlarging the images to such a large size, these stylistic choices are deliberate. In an autobiographic essay, Jesseen commented that he disapproved of dance photographers that utilized a flash to capture a static picture of the dancers and that the secretive nature of the recordings was an intentional part of his documentation.