Tanne Willow
Visual Stories
My journey to become a director is about as eclectic as it gets. It spans over different lives in different countries and a career involving a variety of artistic expression. I’ve gone from working as a contemporary dancer and choreographer, to being a still photographer and cinematographer to finally evolve into a director.
All my experiences have culminated in my expression as a director. I know what it’s like to be the artist, baring your soul for the audience. I feel how the camera moves and changes the message through the composition. I see how the light shapes and changes the whole scene with one single streak and how the sound ties all the different instruments together, each one directing the story in its own way.
This is how I work on every project I pursue. With intuition and sensitivity I carefully shape each scene to evoke the feeling I seek to communicate. Every detail is a narrator, essential to the storyline.
If you’d like to know my journey more personally the read continues further down the page..
For many years I worked as a contemporary dancer and choreographer. I toured world-wide working with different productions, both small and large. When I got a job with a renowned French choreographer I was absolutely thrilled, to say the least. It would turn out however, that this choreographer had a severe temper that he would let loose on his dancers, taring their psyche.
After touring with this choreographer for two and a half years I returned to Sweden depleted, feeling empty and exhausted from my love for dance. This is when I decided it was time to make a change.
I had been photographing since the age of 16, and quite vigorously during the last five years as a dancer. I’d always known I would turn my eye through the lens, eventually, and now I felt like it was calling me. In order to master the craft fully I left Sweden once more and moved to Los Angeles to study at New York Film Academy.
My years at NYFA were absolutely wonderful and i soaked up every piece of information like a sponge! Well aware of the harsh reality of a freelancer, I started setting myself up for work from day one. Once I graduated, I had many opportunities waiting for me.
Again, there were both large and small productions. I worked at a photo-lab, developing film and printing, as a technical assistant, checking in and out equipment, as a set photographer for big productions and in the studio with art projects I exhibited in galleries and at photo-festivals.
In the meantime a new love was developing - my love for moving image. I was mesmerised, watching the image transform infront of my eyes; the composition changing the story, frame-by-frame. I started working both as a photographer and a cinematographer, still afraid to let go of the control over the camera. Once I did however, I saw my ability to shape the story exploding with possibilities.
Now I realise I’ve been telling stories through visual art my whole life. Today I’m back in my beloved Stockholm, Sweden, working both as a photographer, a cinematographer and as a director.
