Barbara Morgan: Masters of Photography Series (Aperture Masters of Photography)

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, José Limón, 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.