Omar Z. Robles’s journey into visual storytelling began as an apprentice of Marcel Marceau in Paris, France. The mime/actor taught students to interpret the world through subtle, powerful movements, a lesson Robles employs today in his photo series of ballet dancers.

Robles was mentored by media outfits such as The Chicago Tribune’s Hoy and Metro San Juan, amassing a portfolio of familiar faces – including JLO, Enrique Iglesias, Marc Anthony, Sara Montiel, among others. He took up street photography and cemented himself as a narrator of the quotidian, whether by contrasting New Yorkers against their infrastructure or by narrating Harlem’s residents in Sunday morning portraits. His photos, stories, and videos have been featured on Instagram’s Blog, My Modern Met, Mashable, The Huffington Post, The Daily Mail, Design Taxi, and Harper’s Bazaar, and more.

In New York City and in numerous other cities across the world, Robles juxtaposed dancers against rugged city landscapes. The portraits reveal the nations’ culture, customs, struggles, and resilience. He's captured the ebullience of a simple snowfall or a Pride Parade, and most recently he documented the heart of New York as dancers clad in masks jeté as a symbol of hope in the face of America's manifestations of racial inequality and during the Covid-19 pandemic.
By placing the dancer on the pavement, Robles seeks to share the joy, the thrill, and the hope dance evokes with everyone across race, gender, nationality, and income level. The dancer transforms before our eyes, into a symbol of prowess in the city – any city – and providing a vision of what may happen if art is suddenly all around us, all the time.