Barbara Morgan (photographer)
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Barbara Morgan (1900-1992) was an American photographer best known for her work in dance. She was a co-founder of the photography magazine Aperture.
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[edit] Biography
She was born Barbara Brooks Johnson in Buffalo, Kansas, but grew up in California. She attended University of California, Los Angeles as a painting student. After a teaching stint in San Fernando, California, she worked at UCLA, where she married photographer Willard D. Morgan. Her awakening to the artistic possibilities of photography began when she hung an exhibition at UCLA by Edward Weston.
After a 1930 move to New York Morgan continued her drawing and painting work, with her first solo show held in Philadelphia in 1934. But after the birth of her second son, she began concentrating on photography. In 1935 she met Martha Graham and began several years of photographing Graham and other dancers. In 1938, she was invited to the Bennington College Summer School of Dance as its official photographer.
She returned to painting in the 1950s, but continued renown for her camerawork. In 1975, she was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant. In later life she lived in Scarsdale, New York, and she died in Tarrytown, New York.
[edit] Published works
- Martha Graham: Sixteen Dances in Photographs
- Summer's Children (about summer camp culture)
[edit] Awards and recogition
- Lifetime Achievement Award of American Society of Magazine Photographers
