From postcards of ballerinas to digital shots where the performers barely look human, the art of snapping dancers has had a dramatic evolution
Barbara Morgan and Martha Graham met in 1935 and it took six years for the former (“a terror” in the studio, according to Graham) to produce the 16 photographs in this collection. In her determination to get at the core of the dance, to what she called “its spiritual energy”, Morgan had Graham perform the same movements over and over again, allowing her to lie down when she was tired, but always insisting that she remove her costume in case it got dirty. The sessions were endurance tests for both women, but Morgan, with her favourite Speed Graphic camera “pressed to cheekbone and eye socket” as she recalled, produced some of the greatest dance photographs ever made.
