Briana Blasko is a San Francisco born portrait photographer who shares her time between India and California. Prior to 2008, she lived in New York for twelve years and photographed contemporary dance for the New York Times. For the past thirteen years, she has been quietly crisscrossing the Indian subcontinent to document the country’s rich traditions of textiles and dance and the enchanting play between the two. Her work has culminated in the production of a series of photographic books, including Dance of the Weave and Within Without: The Path of the Yogi.

Briana began her photographic career doing research for Annie Leibovitz and Susan Sontag on their book, Women. Her photographs have appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, India Vogue, NPR, The World/Public Radio International, CNN, Dance Magazine, Huffington Post, Hand/Eye, Selvedge, Washington Times, India Perspectives, Outlook, Ballet Magazine and Marg. In 2018, The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired selected photographs from Dance of the Weave for their permanent collection.

Although much of Briana’s work is done as a solo artist, she has also worked with hundreds of artists, weavers and dancers over the years. Her work provides a window into a fast-disappearing world of effort and perfection. Understanding how something is made and observing the way in which it is used in its natural context is a process that lends way to appreciation of human creativity at its deepest level.

In her latest book, Within Without: The Path of the Yogi, Briana takes a different perspective on effort and perfection and looks upon what is the work of renunciation and contentment. It is between these powerful forces of creativity and contemplation that Briana Blasko’s work continues to evolve.

Within Without: The Path of the Yogi was published by HarperCollins India 2017 and released with an exhibition at the Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, Ashtanga Yoga Morjim, South Asia at NYU and The Los Angeles Yoga Club.

“One of the many strengths of Blasko’s photography is her point-of-view that is specific and expansive, material and non-material; and the way she is able to handle both the micro and macro aspects in wonderful juxtaposition. This is difficult, as what she captures in still-frames are essentially complex movements – fluid lines of both the inherent threads of fabrics-weave and the residual time-lapse arcs of dance choreography.”

— Outlook Magazine

“The loveliness of her images in the book you are holding resides in their ability to share the restless conversation between body and fabric. At times, the dancer and the dance blur into one, and it becomes hard to separate the two art form – the weave and the rhythm – from each other… I fell in love with Briana’s Indigo series, the churning beauty unleashed by the indigo plant…”

— Donna Karan

“Her images of “swirling, rushing water and the synchronized limbs of indigo workers” erases the idea of natural dyes as an easy, gentle pursuit and reveals the incredible physicality required to produce indigo. Similarly her photographs of looms underscore the intricacy of the process and the graceful movements of the weavers…. Dance of the Weave has the potential to become a classic. No other photographer has approached the vast subject of India in quite the same way.”

— Selvedge Magazine