The perfection of Martha Graham

MORGAN, Barbara. Martha Graham: Sixteen Dances in Photographs. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Morgan & Morgan, 1980.

Oblong 4to.; 168 pp; tan cloth stamped in crimson on cover and spine. In original dust jacket.

First revised edition, second printing. Inscribed to Mark Solanger: “For Mark Solanger / Best Wishes / Barbara Morgan / December 1981”.

Barbara Morgan taught design and printmaking at UCLA in the 1920s but eventually became convinced that the medium of photography possessed expressionistic qualities that rivaled any graphic art. She and her husband Willard relocated to New York City in 1930, where she fully dedicated her time to the medium. In 1935, Morgan attended one of Martha Graham’s dance performances. She was instantly struck by the historical and artistic importance of the emerging American modern dance embodied by the company. That same day, Morgan went to introduce herself to Graham and the two embarked upon a collaborative relationship that would last over six decades. 

The photographer’s philosophical and aesthetic sensibilities, her intuitive understanding of dance as an “eloquent life force,” and her experience of the Native American dances in the Southwest corresponded with the pioneering efforts and ideas of Graham and her dance troupe. As Morgan once observed, “The other photographers and painters who dealt with the Depression, often it seemed to me, only added to defeatism without giving courage or hope. Yet the galvanizing protest danced by Martha Graham and others was heartening. Often nearly starving, they never gave up, but forged life-affirming dance statements of American society in stress and strain. In this role, their dance reminded me of Indian ceremonial dances which invigorate the tribe in drought and difficulty.” 

Morgan began photographing Graham and her company in the controlled setting of her studio and not during public performances. In 1941, Morgan produced a seminal book entitled, Martha Graham: Sixteen Dances in Photographs—it would forever redefine their respective disciplines.

The revised first edition, published some 39 years after the first edition, includes a “Dancer’s Focus” by Graham, an essay by George Beiswanger, a complete chronological list of dances composed by Graham from April 1926 to June 1941 by Lois Horst, a list of important tours, special performances, and events, a description of outstanding dances not pictured, and a list of members of dance groups (1926–41). 

If Morgan found her muse, Graham found her Boswell. In her “Dancer’s Focus,” she noted, “It is rare that even an inspired photographer possesses the demonic eye which can capture the instant of dance and transform it into timeless gesture. In Barbara Morgan I found that person. In looking at these photographs today, I feel, as I felt when I first saw them, privileged to have been a part of this collaboration. For to me, Barbara Morgan through her art reveals the inner landscape that is a dancer's world.”

Held with:

Photocopy of TLS from Martha Graham to Barbara Morgan. September 8, 1941.
One bifoliate folio leaf; one 4to. leaf. Rectos only.

Photocopy of ALS from Barbara Morgan to Martha Graham. Undated [circa 1940s].
Oblong 4to.; recto only.

Photocopy of TL from Barbara Morgan to Martha Graham. May 12, 1983.
4to.; recto only.