Today we’d like to introduce you to Jaqlin Medlock.
Hi Jaqlin, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I’ve always had a hard time answering the question, “What do you do?” because I’ve never really been just one thing. At my core, I’m an artist. I’m a dancer, photographer, certified energy healer, and now, alongside my husband Ryan, the co-creator of Studio 810, our live/work creative space in Downtown Jersey City. I’m also hard of hearing, which is something I spent a lot of my life trying not to draw attention to and am only more recently learning to speak about openly as part of who I am.
I grew up in the Bronx and started dancing when I was young. Dance eventually became my career and took me places I never could have imagined. After earning my BFA in Dance from Marymount Manhattan College, I spent much of my professional performing career with Stephen Petronio Company. I had the opportunity to travel the world, perform incredible work, and spend years surrounded by artists who shaped the way I see movement, creativity, and collaboration.
Photography actually grew out of that world. I was already so interested in bodies in motion, light, composition, and those tiny moments that happen between the “big” moments onstage. Being a dancer gave me a very specific way of seeing other dancers. I understand what movement feels like from the inside, and I think that has always informed the way I photograph it.
What began as another creative outlet gradually became a second career. I started photographing dancers and performances, then headshots, portraits, editorial work, and larger projects. Over time, photography became less of something I did alongside dancing and more of its own identity. I’ve now been photographing professionally for well over a decade, working with dancers, artists, schools, companies, and organizations throughout New York, New Jersey, and beyond. I feel incredibly lucky that photography has allowed me to stay deeply connected to the dance and performing arts communities while also continuing to grow creatively in completely new directions.
Energy healing came into my life through another part of my own journey and eventually became another way for me to connect with and care for people. On paper, dancing, photography, and energy work may seem like completely different things, but to me they’re actually very connected. They all require presence, intuition, listening, and paying attention to things that aren’t always obvious on the surface.
The newest chapter has been Studio 810. When Ryan and I found our home in Jersey City, we saw the possibility of creating something that could be both our home and a real working creative space. We designed Studio 810 around the kind of environment I always wanted to photograph in: warm, flexible, comfortable, and genuinely welcoming to artists. It has become the home of my photography practice as well as a space other photographers and creatives can use for their own work.
My relationship with dance is changing, too. After many years of performing full-time, Stephen Petronio Company closed in 2025, which forced me to ask some big questions about who I am when one of the identities I’ve carried for most of my life changes. I haven’t stopped dancing, and I don’t think I ever really will. I still perform when the right projects come along, but I’m also allowing myself to build something new.
I think that’s really where I am today: somewhere between honoring everything that got me here and being excited about what I haven’t built yet. Dance taught me how to see and listen with my whole body, photography gave me another way to communicate what I see, energy work taught me another way to connect, and Studio 810 has given me a physical place to bring so many of those worlds together.
I’m still figuring out exactly what the next chapter looks like, but I’ve learned that some of the most interesting parts of my life have come from not needing to have just one answer to the question, “What do you do?”
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Definitely not. I think one of the biggest struggles throughout my life has been finding where I fit.
I was always the “different” child, and not only because I was hard of hearing. Even in school, I was friends with everyone but never really belonged to one particular group. No one minded if I was there, but somehow I’d be forgotten when plans were being made, and then the next time they saw me it would be, “Where were you?!” It’s a funny little example, but I think it describes something I’ve felt for much of my life: welcomed in a lot of places without necessarily feeling like I fully belonged anywhere. I’ve also always gotten along with animals more easily than people, which probably says something! I think I learned pretty early how to enjoy my own company and became very comfortable doing things on my own. As an adult, that has followed me in ways that have been both challenging and, eventually, really valuable. I’ve never fit neatly into a box, so in a lot of ways I’ve had to create my own.
Being hard of hearing has certainly been part of that. I’ve been hard of hearing since birth, and for most of my life I became very good at adapting without telling anyone I was adapting. I learned to read lips, watch bodies, follow visual cues, fill in missing pieces and, honestly, sometimes just pretend I heard something when I didn’t. For years I didn’t want it to be something people noticed or something that defined me. I’m only more recently becoming comfortable saying, “I’m hard of hearing. I need you to face me when you speak,” instead of quietly working twice as hard to keep up.
Something I spent years thinking I needed to hide, I’m beginning to understand as simply another part of the way I experience the world. I pay very close attention. I notice body language, expressions, energy and small shifts between people. Dance taught me to communicate without words, and photography gave me another visual language entirely. I don’t know that I would have connected those things when I was younger, but I can see the relationship now.
Money has also been a very real challenge. I don’t come from money. In fact, I came from debt, and I had to claw my way out of it. Everything I have, I’ve had to work for. Choosing a life in the arts certainly didn’t make that easier.
Being an artist comes with a certain amount of uncertainty built in. You can work incredibly hard, be very good at what you do, and still have so much outside of your control. Your body changes, companies change, funding changes, opportunities come and go, and you still have to figure out how to pay your bills.
Building a photography career alongside a dance career meant teaching myself an entirely different business while I was still performing. Being self-employed means constantly learning things that have very little to do with making art: pricing, contracts, marketing, taxes, equipment, client relationships, business insurance, liability, and generally figuring out how to protect yourself and the thing you’ve worked so hard to build. There isn’t exactly a handbook handed to you when you decide to make a living as an artist. Outside of the recurring photography and dance jobs I’m incredibly grateful to have, I’ve essentially created my own work.
One of the biggest changes came when Stephen Petronio Company closed in 2025. I had spent such a significant part of my adult life with the company that losing it wasn’t simply losing a job. It was losing a community, a routine, an artistic home, and a version of myself that I understood really well. I’m still figuring out what my relationship with dance looks like on the other side of that.
I still dance and perform, but I’m no longer actively chasing performance opportunities. If something meaningful finds its way to me and it feels right, I’m open to it. I’m learning that changing my relationship to something doesn’t mean I have to stop loving it or stop being part of it.
The truth is, I’m still an anxious person. Change is hard for me, and the unknown can be terrifying. I definitely haven’t reached some magical place where I’m completely comfortable not knowing what comes next. What I am learning is to trust a little more. To trust myself, to trust everything I’ve built, and to trust that the universe has a funny way of leading me toward the things that are meant for me, even when I can’t see where I’m going yet.
Looking back, some of the things I’m most proud of came from not having an obvious path to follow. I couldn’t find a box that fit, so I started building a life outside of one.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
These days, the majority of my creative work is photography, with a particular love for photographing dancers, movement, people, and animals. My background as a professional dancer is inseparable from the way I work behind the camera.
I know movement from the inside. When I’m photographing a dancer, I’m not just watching for an interesting shape. I understand where they are going, where their weight is, when a movement is about to peak, and often what is going to happen a fraction of a second before it happens. I understand the technique behind what I’m seeing, but also what the movement feels like in the body. There are details in placement, timing, line and transition that I recognize instinctively because I’ve spent most of my life doing it myself.
The funny thing is, with all of that knowledge and experience, the actual moment I take a photograph usually isn’t a conscious decision. I don’t think, “This is the moment, press the shutter now.” I just do it. There’s a lot of intuition involved. I’m watching, feeling and anticipating all at once, and somewhere along the way my finger responds before my brain has had a chance to explain why. I think dance has a lot to do with that. As a dancer, you spend years training your body so that eventually you don’t have to consciously think about every individual movement. Photography has become a little like that for me, too.
Movement is probably the biggest thread running through my work. I photograph individual artists and performers, but I also work extensively with dance companies, schools, universities and arts organizations. I love helping a company translate what they do into images they can use to represent and advertise their work, and I absolutely love photographing live performance. I’m also very inspired by fashion and editorial photography and like bringing some of that influence into my dance work.
Even when I’m photographing a portrait or headshot, I almost always want something to be moving. Hair, fabric, a hand, a shift in weight, something. Just standing perfectly still is incredibly boring to me! There has to be some life in it.
Animals are another direction I would really love to explore more. I’ve always connected very naturally with them, and photographing them brings together so many things I’m drawn to: personality, movement, unpredictability and intuition.
People have described my photography as clean, clear, sharp and refined, with strong lines and natural personality. One of the biggest compliments I receive is when someone tells me they knew an image was mine before they ever saw the photo credit. What makes me laugh is that every one of those words has also been used to describe my dancing. Apparently I have a point of view whether I mean to or not!
One of my favorite things is showing someone an image and hearing, “I didn’t know I could do that!” or “I didn’t know I looked like that!” I love when people impress themselves. They’ll sometimes thank me for the photograph, and of course I appreciate that, but part of me always thinks, “That was you! I just showed you what I was looking at.” I’m not creating something in them that wasn’t already there.
My shoots are very collaborative. I don’t believe the photographer has to be the only person in the room with a good idea. I want to know what someone is drawn to, what they’re imagining, what they’re nervous about, and what they want the photographs to feel like. Sometimes we have a very specific plan, and sometimes the best image comes from trying something weird just to see what happens. I love that part.
Becoming an energy healer has also made me trust my intuition more. Dance, photography and energy work may look like completely unrelated parts of my life, but they all require me to pay attention to what I’m sensing, not just what I’m being told. That intuition has become a huge part of the way I work.
Studio 810 has become an extension of all of this. My husband Ryan and I created the studio inside our live/work space in Downtown Jersey City, and I wanted it to feel different from the big, anonymous rental studios I had worked in over the years. It’s a professional photography space, but it’s also intimate and comfortable. I want people to walk in, exhale a little, put on music, make some coffee or tea, and feel like they have permission to play and make something.
We’re also beginning to build a small membership at Studio 810 for photographers and creatives who want more consistent access to a professional space without it feeling like an anonymous rental studio. I love the idea of the studio becoming not only a place where I work, but a little creative community of its own.
Creating Studio 810 has also made me stop and look at what I’ve built in a way I probably don’t do often enough. I built my photography career while I was still dancing professionally, largely by learning as I went. Some of the people, schools and organizations I photograph have been coming back to me for years, and that continued trust means an enormous amount to me.
I’m also proud that I haven’t had to completely abandon one part of myself to make room for another. Dance is still in my photography. Photography is in the way I look at dance. Energy work influences the way I connect with people and trust my instincts. My love of animals is finding its way in there, too. Studio 810 gives all of those things a home.
If there is something that sets my work apart, I think it’s probably that combination. So much of what I do comes from experience, instinct and the way I see things. I want the images to be polished without losing the person inside of them. I want movement to feel alive. And more than anything, I want to pay enough attention to show people something about themselves that was already there, whether they realized it or not.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
EEEEK. I feel like I have to say AI, right?
I honestly don’t know exactly where photography will be in five or ten years, and I think anyone who says they do is probably braver than I am! AI is developing so quickly that it’s impossible to ignore. We’re already at a point where you can create incredibly convincing images of people, places and situations that never existed, and I imagine that is going to change certain parts of commercial photography dramatically.
As a photographer, that is both fascinating and a little terrifying.
At the same time, AI is already helping me do my job more efficiently. Some of the newer technology for things like masking and retouching has been incredibly helpful. Tasks that used to require a lot of tedious manual work can happen so much faster now, which gives me more time to focus on the parts of photography I actually love. I’m definitely not against AI as a tool. I think there’s an important difference between technology helping an artist make their work and technology generating the work entirely.
And maybe, as generated imagery becomes more common, what is real becomes more valuable too.
I photograph actual people moving through actual space. I photograph dancers doing things with their bodies that they have spent years training to do. I photograph live performances that happen once and then disappear. There is something about witnessing a real moment and preserving it that I don’t think becomes less meaningful just because we can generate an image of something that never happened.
I also think we’re going to continue seeing an enormous demand for content. Photography has already shifted so much because of social media. Companies, schools, artists and organizations don’t just need one beautiful image anymore. They need websites, social media, announcements, campaigns, behind-the-scenes content and a constant stream of things to share. I think photographers are increasingly being asked to think beyond the single photograph and understand how images are going to live and work in all of those different places.
I also have a feeling I’m eventually going to have to get over my resistance to video. Right now, I honestly have very little interest in making it myself. I love the still image. I love finding that one fraction of a second and deciding that’s the moment. But I can see the direction things are moving, and I suspect at some point offering some kind of video or motion content alongside photography is going to feel less optional. Maybe in five years I’ll read this and laugh at how resistant I was!
With all of these changes, I think the part I’m most interested in holding onto is the experience of actually being there. Especially with dance and live performance, photography is a record of something that really happened. That dancer really jumped that high. That expression really happened. That performance existed for that moment, and then it was gone. I think there will always be something special about being able to preserve that.
I’m sure the tools will change. They always do. I’ll probably complain about some of them, become obsessed with others, and eventually wonder how I ever worked without them. But I hope photography itself continues to be about seeing something worth remembering and deciding, for whatever reason, this is the moment I want to keep.
Pricing:
- Headshot Session: $420 for 60 minutes. Retouched images purchased separately at $20 each.
- Movement Session: $520 for 60 minutes. Retouched images purchased separately at $20 each.
- Headshot + Movement Session: $650 for 90 minutes. Retouched images purchased separately at $20 each.
- Dance companies, schools, universities, live performances and larger creative projects: custom pricing available.
- Studio 810: studio rentals and limited membership opportunities available. Please inquire for current rates and availability.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jaqlinmedlock.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaqlinmedlockphotography/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jaqlinmedlockphotography/
- Other: https://www.wearestudio810.com
