Lois Greenfield

LOIS GREENFIELD

Lois Greenfield (born April 18, 1949) An American photographer best known for her unique approach to photographing the human form in motion. Born in NYC, in which she attended Hunter College Elementary School, the Fieldstone School and Brandeis University. She then majored in Anthropology expecting to become an ethnographic filmmaker but she  became a photojournalist for local Boston newspapers. During the mid 1970's, her career path changed when she was assigned to shoot a dress rehearsal for a dance concert. She has since specialised in photographing dancers not in performance, but in her photo studio as part of her exploration of the expressive potential of movement. She has created countless classic images for the word's most well known dance companies such as Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Bill T Jones/ Arnie Zane and American Ballet Theatre.

In order to explore my theme of power, I intend to go down the route of looking at movement. For this shoot I took pictures of people dancing in mid-action. The dancing represents power and movement and also the pictures are also candid. They knew I was taking the pictures but they are obliviously to the fact I was there, which I liked as the photos are more in a natural state and are real. 

Artist copy

For this shoot, I wanted to focus on the flow of the material in the air; how it effortlessly is thrown in the air and falls differently each time. I wanted to capture the movement of this and also the dancer in mid-action. I decided to take the pictures mainly portrait to get the whole of the material in. The colour blue was used to stand out against the black on the model.