Hi, I'm Matthew Murphy, theater photographer,
and this is Playbill's from Ballet to Broadway.
Matthew Murphy is a renowned theatre photographer who trained as a dancer at
the School of American Ballet and performed with American Ballet Theatre.
As a photographer he has captured some of the most iconic shows on Broadway in recent years.
When I was 13, I decided that I needed to pursue it professionally
and I went to North Carolina School the Arts for the year-round program,
which looking back, I kind of can't believe at 13, that I decided that.
They had a kind of direct feed into the big New York companies
so we were always getting scouted by the companies from New York and by the time
I was 16 it became pretty clear to me that I was gonna make my way to the city,
and I was trying to decide between going to School of American Ballet year round
for further training or to join American Ballet Theatre's studio company.
So at 16 I decided to take the leap and, no pun intended, I came to the city,
moved here and joined American Ballet Theatre Studio company at 17.
Professionally, I danced with American Ballet Theater from 2003 to 2007.
You basically stay for a year in the studio company, usually, sometimes two years depending on the
needs of the main company. And so by the time our group had finished their first
year, the main company needed a lot of dancers and so they ended up taking
I think 10 of, 10 of us into the company that year, so it was amazing to move with
my group of friends that I'd kind of grown up through these summer programs with
and kind of all sweep into the company together.
And I think that all of us were fortunate enough that I think we all got offered
full-time contracts after that first summer season at the Met.
And so basically I've stayed with the company from that point,
which was May when I was 17 or 18, and then
stayed with them until I was about 22.
Basically what happened was I was dancing with ABT, and we had just been on tour,
and I'd been documenting all my travels, I'd been taking a lot of photos,
and all of a sudden I kind of woke up one day and I wasn't feeling very well,
and I kept saying to everybody around me, something feels kind of off,
my body doesn't feel great, I feel, you know you're so in tune with your body as a dancer
that if anything is wrong you're pretty quick to pick up on it.
And that went on for two years.
I can't really explain why, but for some reason I needed something to do with my days because I
was pretty homebound and I had a little bit of money left in savings and I knew
that I liked taking photos from the blog, and I went on Amazon and I just thought, you know what,
I'm just gonna buy a point, I'm gonna buy a DSLR and start to play around with photography.
And, I so vividly remember that box arriving at my
doorstep and feeling this surge of creative energy that I hadn't really
felt since I was a kid and first discovering ballet.
My first Broadway photography gig was Kinky Boots. It was just this door that opened for me that
really all comes back to Jerri saying yes.
One of the biggest challenges that I faced transitioning careers
from the ballet world to the professional photography world
was the idea that no one was gonna be there to tell me what to do,
no one was gonna be putting a call sheet on the board saying, show up at 10 o'clock in the morning,
take company class, then you'll go to this rehearsal, then you'll have a lunch break.
There was no schedule for me. All of a sudden I was
really in control of my own destiny in a way that I hadn't ever quite felt in the
ballet world. And I think finally after a few years of teaching myself the general
skill set of becoming a photographer, which I continued to do on a daily basis,
I think I finally just had to talk to myself and I said, you know what?
You have to be brave, you have to put yourself out there, the worst possible thing that can
happen is that you send an email, or you shake a hand, and it doesn't lead to
anything, or you don't get a response. And so what? I've been really fortunate that
I think a lot of the times that I had that conversation with myself and said,
forget the dancer voice in your head that's waiting for somebody to tell you
what to do, and ask for what you want.
Those are the times that I felt myself really progress forward in my career
and it's a wonderful feeling to reach out and ask for help
and to find that somebody's willing to give you a chance.
Next up for me is a lot of travel. I'm getting to travel to a couple of different countries
to photograph different shows and I'll also be photographing some Broadway shows here
in the spring and the winter. And on top of that, I really am trying to create
some space in my life in order to spend some more time with my husband,
spend some more time with my puppies, and also spend some time creating
my own personal work because I think that that's very important for an artist is to have the
opportunity to step away from the more commercial work and to actually kind of
create what's in their brain and showcase the type of
work that you want to be getting hired for