Your body is electric when you walk into a party, a mix of anticipation and excitement pumping through your veins. You open the door and take in the familiar scene of bodies swaying fluidly to the music in a dimly lit room. 

You step inside, turn the corner and there she is. Glitter-coated eyes closed, lips wide and loosely grinning. She personifies that feeling of losing yourself, a feeling you know all too well. You crave it, leaving yourself with no choice but to surrender to the moment, consuming it as much as it consumes you. 

This is what it feels like to walk into TRANCE, a photography exhibition presented by locals Annie Forrest and Zac Cruz. Their show embodies the hedonistic joy of the dance floor in all its drug-induced glory. It is a difficult feeling to mimic with images alone, but Forrest and Cruz do so with ease.  

Their work pairs well, communicating the interplay between natural and synthetic worlds. The viewer is lifted from floral gardens into ethereal skies and moonrises and then brought back to the titillating reality of disco lights and naked bodies. 

“I want to impart that high energy feeling, to bring those moments of rapture to people through photography,” says Forrest.  

The exhibition is hosted in a private Vancouver apartment, which adds an alluring and immersive quality to the show. Photos are taped unpretentiously to the hallway, kitchen, and bathroom walls, making the viewer feel like they really are at a party as they walk through the home.   

“The photos have an energy of human connection, so it’s nice to see them in a human environment and not just in an austere white space,” says Forrest, inspired by the apartment galleries that are more common in Berlin and New York than in Vancouver. 

Forrest and Cruz are “in the moment” artists, preferring documentary-style film photography. They met during an era of partying in Vancouver with cameras in hand. 

As they were both exploring themes related to the absurdities of life, human connection and getting outside of their own bodies, they found a counterpoint in each other’s work that was ripe for collaboration. 

For Forrest, photography is a means of exploring eccentricities and building relationships. For Cruz, it’s also a personal process of working with his dyslexia as a form of creative expression.

“Rather than fighting the dissociation that is common for me, I try to explore it through photography. I’d like to think that my process is one of acceptance of whatever my surroundings are at the time and where I’m at emotionally, and just using that as the impetus for creation rather than running from it,” he says. 

“Photography is about this dissociative effect. When you’re taking a photo you enter a trance-like state, just like dancing,” adds Forrest.  

Given the context of the pandemic, the show evokes a sense of celebratory nostalgia. For the freedom we used to feel coming together on the dance floor.  

To hold you over until that time when we can close our eyes and feel the music, bodies slick and pressed against one another, check out TRANCE. Viewings are available on Sundays until April 18.