page_title: Barbara Morgan (photographer)
section_title: Work in the Southwestern US
hierarchical_section_title: Barbara Morgan (photographer) / Biography / Work in the Southwestern US
caption_attribution_description: English: Barbara Morgan Painting Grand Canyon
context_page_description: Barbara Morgan was an American photographer best known for her depictions of modern dancers. She was a co-founder of the photography magazine Aperture.
  Morgan is known in the visual art and dance worlds for her penetrating studies of American modern dancers Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Erick Hawkins, José Limón, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman and others. Morgan's drawings, prints, watercolors and paintings were exhibited widely in California in the 1920s, and in New York and Philadelphia in the 1930s.
context_section_description: Every summer when classes were over, Willard and Barbara loaded their car, with painting and photography equipment and headed for the desert. Barbara painted as much as possible for winter exhibits and helped Willard photograph for articles. Willard had two Model A Leicas, with which the couple photographed each other in cliff ruins, climbing Rainbow Bridge, in the Hopi mesas and canyons. The resulting photographs were among the first 35mm images to appear in American magazines illustrating Willard's articles.
  Morgan's Southwest experiences were deeply influential to her. The stratification of Grand Canyon and Monument Valley attuned her to geologic time; Mesa Verde Cliff Dwellings to ancient human time. The Navajo and Pueblo Indian tribes through ritual dance displayed their “partnership in the cosmic process” and connected her to a universal primal.
caption: Morgan painting the Grand Canyon in 1928. Photograph by Willard Morgan
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