Barbara Morgan

by Barbara Morgan; With an Essay by Deba P. Patnaik

• ISBN13: 9780893818258
• ISBN10: 0893818259
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 1999-05-31
• Publisher: Aperture

Summary

Although celebrated for her extraordinary studies of modern dance in the late 1920s and early thirties, Barbara Morgan enjoyed an artistic career that embraced a wide range of philosophical and aesthetic influences. Her studies of pioneering dancers such as Martha Graham, Jose Limon, Erik Hawkins and Merce Cunningham capture the spirituality of a temporal art. She also combined photograms and light drawing to experiment with moving light patterns. A former painter, she used montage and manipulated imagery to express the visual and kinetic energy of New York City. Included in this volume are the finest examples of Morgan's work: dance photographs, photomontages, light drawings and other works from a long, varied photographic career. In the accompanying essay, Deba P. Patnaik, photo-historian and Executive Director of the Willard & Barbara Morgan Foundation, provides an overview of the development of Morgan's career and insight into the beliefs that informed her work.

Author Biography

Barbara Morgan was born in 1900 in Buffalo, Kansas. Her early training in painting and printmaking at the University of California at Los Angeles lent her photography a dynamically graphic and expressionistic quality. Utilizing a wide range of experimental techniques, she constantly strove to portray the essential qualities of her subject matter--whether she was photographing dance, her children, nature, or the urban landscape. Her explorations with photomontage and light drawings were unique to the American photography of her time, and her documentation of American modern dance has left us with a vibrant legacy of an emergent dance form.