Barbara Morgan’s “Martha Graham, Letter to the World” photograph
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Barbara Morgan
Barbara Morgan Martha Graham American Document Trio
Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham American Document Trio
1938, Printed Later
Silver Gelatin Photograph
Signed and dated on print recto.
16 x 20 inches
Barbara Morgan Valerie Bettis The Desperate Heart
Barbara Morgan
Valerie Bettis The Desperate Heart
1944
Vintage Silver Gelatin Photograph
Signed on print verso.
20 x 16 inches
Barbara Morgan Martha Graham Celebration
Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham Celebration
1937, Printed Later
Silver Gelatin Photograph
Signed and dated on print recto. Signed, titled, and dated with Artist stamp on print verso.
20 x 16 inches
Barbara Morgan Mb 04 04
Barbara Morgan Martha Graham Letter To The World Kick
Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham Letter to the World Kick
1940, printed c. 1980
Silver Gelatin Photograph
Signed, titled, and dated in pencil on the mount recto; signed, titled, and dated in ink verso.
17 1/8 x 21 5/8 inches
Barbara Morgan Martha Graham El Penitente
Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham El Penitente
1940, Printed Later
Silver Gelatin Photograph
Signed, titled, and dated on mount recto. Signed, titled, dated, artist stamp, and copyright information on mount verso. Artist notations in ink on verso.
13 1/8 x 10 1/8 inches, Mounted on 20 x 16 inches board
Barbara Morgan Martha Graham Every Soul Is A Circus
Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham Every Soul Is a Circus
1940, Printed Later
Silver Gelatin Photograph
Signed, titled, and dated on print recto and verso.
16 x 20 inches
Barbara Morgan Martha Graham Letter To The World Swirl
Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham Letter to the World Swirl
1940, Printed 1980
Silver Gelatin Photograph
Signed, artist's copyright stamp, titled and dated on verso.
13 3/8 x 15 3/8 inches
Barbara Morgan Martha Graham Primitive Mysteries
Barbara Morgan
Martha Graham Primitive Mysteries
1935, Printed Later
Silver Gelatin Photograph
Signed, titled, and dated on print recto. Signed, titled and dated on print verso.
13 1/4 x 17 7/8 inches
Barbara Morgan Jose Limon Mexican Suite Peon
Barbara Morgan
Limon Mexican Suite peon
1944, Printed Later
Silver Gelatin Photograph
Signed and dated on mount's recto.
10 x 13 3/8 inches, mounted on 16 x 20 board
Barbara Morgan Jose Limon Mexican Suite
Barbara Morgan
Limon Mexican Suite
1944
Vintage Silver Gelatin Photograph
Signed and titled on print verso.
20 x 16 inches
Barbara Morgan Pearl Primus Speak To Me Of Rivers
Barbara Morgan
Pearl Primus Speak to Me of Rivers
1944, Printed c. 1960s
Silver Gelatin Photograph
Signed on print verso.
16 X 20 inches
BARBARA MORGAN
Barbara Morgan’s portraits of Martha Graham captured the essence of that choreographer’s art. Mrs. Morgan was best known for her photographs of American modern dancers, among them Graham, Jose Limon, Doris Humphrey, Pearl Primus, Charles Weidman, Erick Hawkins and Merce Cunningham. Her dance photographs were never intended for publicity or documentation. Instead, she said in a 1980 interview, they were metaphors, created to catch the symbolic image that epitomized the dance or dancer. Like Graham, she believed that gestures could express profound emotional truths. Her photographs revealed, Graham wrote in 1980, “the inner landscape that is a dancer’s world.” She said one of her earliest influences was her father’s suggestion that his 5-year-old daughter “think of everything in the world as dancing atoms.” But she came to photography reluctantly and then, accidentally, to dance.
Her husband, Willard D. Morgan, talked her into trying photography, although she resisted at first, calling it journalism rather than art. Mr. Morgan, whom she married in 1925 and who died in 1967, was a photojournalist who made the Leica camera popular. He was the first photography editor of Life magazine and the first director of the photography division at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. In 1935, soon after Mrs. Morgan had begun to photograph, she saw Graham’s “Primitive Mysteries” and was drawn to its treatment of ritual in the American Southwest. The two women began six years of intense collaboration on a book, “Martha Graham: 16 Dances in Photographs,” which was a centerpiece of both careers and which is considered the quintessential statement on how to look at dance and record it. The two women remained lifelong friends.
After 1945, Mrs. Morgan concentrated on photographing children, trees and plants, and on designing photomontages and light drawings. Her correspondence with William Carlos Williams, Margaret Mead, Joseph Campbell and Edward Weston, an early photographic influence, is considered a rich historical resource. Among Mrs. Morgan’s other books are “Summer’s Children,” “Barbara Morgan” and “Barbara Morgan Photomontage,” all published by Morgan & Morgan of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y. Her photographs were exhibited in solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution and other museums and galleries in the United States and Europe.
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