Barbara Morgan: Photographic Studies of American Modern Dance

November 24, 2003 – March 15, 2004

Martha Graham: Letter to the World (1941)

Born in 1900, acclaimed photographer Barbara Morgan first became interested in motion as a young girl when her father explained that even stationary, inanimate objects had millions of tiny atoms dancing inside of them. This interest in motion led Morgan to first become a painter and then a photographer. In the 1930s and 1940s, photographing pioneering dancers such as Martha Graham, José Limón, Erik Hawkins, and Merce Cunningham, Morgan attempted to express the essence of the emerging phenomenon of American Modern Dance.

One influence on the photographer’s sense of visual and kinetic movement and energy was the ritual dances of the Hopi, Navajo, and Zuni tribes, which she had witnessed while living in the American Southwest. Entranced by the unpredictable rhythm of the dances, Morgan eventually turned to modern dance as a subject for the way it challenged traditional modes of movement.

Barbara Morgan photographed the ritual dances that fascinated her using a newly manufactured small-format Leica camera, a very experimental way to work at the time. Most photographers were still using large-format cameras that did not allow a large range of motion in following their subjects. Although she eventually used a 4x5 camera when she started seriously pursuing dance photography, this early use of the Leica camera highlights one of the qualities Morgan is best known for: her willingness to experiment. Employing techniques such as double exposure, photo montage, and strobe photography in her dance work and in her expressionist work, Barbara Morgan has established herself as a major figure in the history of photography.

After presentation at the Dean’s Gallery, it is anticipated that these works, from the MIT List Visual Arts Center Permanent Collection, will be on view at Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center.

All images are protected by copyright law and thus cannot be reproduced or altered without the expressed, written permission of the artists.

 

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