I walked up the steps of the Legion Hall as the rhythms of the Tango swirled towards me. A nice man sat at the door. 'Welcome,' he said and invited me into a dark room with deep blue and red light washing walls and floor, a magical dance hall where earlier was the legion hall. Circling about the floor were incredibly elegant people, dressed like diamonds, in tight embraces, moving elegantly and passionately. I heard no laughter. No loud talking. Hardly any soft talking. The dancing talked, talked in the embrace of each other.

I had just come from photographing violent, sweaty boxing matches -women against women, men against men. Oddly, the similarities in the boxing and the dancing struck me.. In their most telling, the hard, pounding boxing and the soft, firm, close embrace of the Tango are both about life, and living this life well. In these two events is true human expression, the inner human nature, the reptilian brain unleashed, thanatos and eros, a full knowing of what life holds and is. In both events, the participants were living through their bodies. They were alive: one alive to fear, to courage, to power and submission; the other alive to intimacy, bonding, sharing, lost to the pleasure of another, sacrificing all to the other for the sake of dance. Such is our humanity defined in our human congress, expressed by animal force and animal submission.

Between the boxing and the dance is the mushy middle, where dullness and boredom exist, masked by caffeine and over-stimulation deluding us into thinking our lives have meaning. Most of us have forgotten how to live, in our bodies. Yet how else do we think or feel but through the body.And how else but by living through the physical body, do we know we have a soul?

There is no soul when sitting comfortably ensconced, watching images of other people living well. What does it mean to sit staring at game shows, at endless commercials, at the internet observing people laughing, outgoing, having a great time? We are deluded; we call it entertainment and our brain imagines we are the ones laughing, but the truth is we're just sitting and staring. The only way we have to live well is to actively engage the world by way of our bodies … which both the boxers and dancers are doing. They know the world through their bodies. They are living life. You see it in their faces in these images.

Ironically, right now, you are looking at them live life. You are staring at them living life. I take these photos to remind you that the photos are not life, only for you to know life is out there for you to live and feel. Shut off the machine filled with images, go out, and live well.