Lois Greenfield

Lois Greenfield (born April 18, 1949) is an American photographer best known for her unique approach to photographing the human form in motion. Born in New York City, she attended Hunter College Elementary School, the Fieldston School, and Brandeis University. Greenfield majored in Anthropology and expected to become an ethnographic filmmaker but instead, she became a photojournalist for local Boston newspapers. She traveled around the world on various assignments as a photojournalist but her career path changed in the mid-1970s when she was assigned to shoot a dress rehearsal for a dance concert."A Moment in Time." Sublime Magazine. Giovanna Dunmall. March 2007. Greenfield has since specialized in photographing dancers in her photo studio as part of her exploration of the expressive potential of movement."Suspended in Time: The Imagery of Lois Greenfield." Double Exposure Magazine. Lynn Eodice. February 2006.

She has created images for the world's most well known dance companies such as Alvin Ailey, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and American Ballet Theatre. Her work has been published in numerous periodicals, and has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world."Snap Frozen in a Moment of Flight." Kodak Australia. Jane Albert. Based in New York City, she gives workshops and lectures in schools around the world.Hasselblad Reflections Volume 3, Number 1.

Beginning of career

In the mid-1970s, Greenfield began what would become a twenty-year relationship with The Village Voice photographing dance companies reviewed by dance critic Deborah Jowitt for her weekly column."Lois Greenfield Dance Photographs." Deborah Jowitt. 1987. This led to assignments from newspapers and magazines around the world. Around this time she had the opportunity to interview and write about many photographers whom she admired. Among her subjects were Jacques Henri Lartigue, André Kertész, Duane Michals, and Barbara Morgan, who along with photographer Max Waldman were her biggest inspirations.

Rehearsal to Studio

By the late 70's, she became dissatisfied with a documentary approach to dance photography, which she considered to be merely capturing someone else's art form. This led Greenfield to discover what would become her own visual syntax.

In 1980, she set up a studio where she invited her subjects to improvise, and together they explored high–risk and non-repeatable moments that could only be seen as a photograph. She created moments expressly for the camera, exploiting photography's ability to slice time into 1/2000 of a second, revealing to the viewer what the naked eye can't see. Greenfield describes her use of the medium format Hasselblad camera and how it influenced her:

Greenfield developed a radical way of photographing movement. Her dancers appear weightless, freed from the constraints of gravity and locked together in seemingly impossible configurations. The more incomprehensible the picture looked, the more successful it was in Greenfield's eyes: "What intrigues me is making images that confound and confuse the viewer, but that the viewer knows, or suspects, really happened ..I can't depict the moments before or after the camera's click, but I invite the viewer's consideration of that question.""Instants Surréels." TALK Magazine (Belgium). Quentin Gaillard. 2011

Since these early experiments, her photographic method has stayed pretty much the same - shooting just one moment out of a phrase of movement, and never digitally compositing the dancers' positions in the frame. All her photographs are literal documents, taken as single in-camera images."Inspiracion Que Fluye." La Revista Magazine (Mexico). Jorge Mejia. 2012"The Subtleties of Expression." photo technique magazine. Bree Lamb. 2013. According to Samantha Clark, "The most interesting moments are the ambiguous ones when you really don't know what is happening or why. The buoyant images in Greenfield's art might have even fooled Galileo, Newton and Einstein.""Images that Defy the Laws of Physics." Samantha Clark

Commercial

Commercial clients picked up on the metaphoric nature of Greenfield's imagery, and commissioned her to create campaigns. Her photos and videos have been featured in campaigns for Sony, Disney, Rolex, Hanes, Pepsi, Johnson & Johnson, Epson, and Kodak, among others. Her most recognized commercial assignment was the series of advertisements she created for Raymond Weil watches in 1993, which appeared on billboards and ads worldwide."Framing Rhythm." The Times Journal of Photography. Amrita Ganguly Salian. 2006. Greenfield has also directed numerous videos and TV commercials.

Collaborations

Since the mid-1990s, Greenfield has been fascinated by non-traditional forms of photographic presentation. Invited to participate in "Le Printemps de Cahors" in France in 1994, she projected her images onto a 30-foot high water screen in the Lot River.

She pioneered the use of live photography as an integral part of a dance performance. Greenfield collaborated from 2003 to 2007 with the Australian Dance Theatre on HELD, a dance inspired by her photography. Greenfield was onstage shooting the live action, and her images were projected on the stage in real-time. The dance and its representation appeared virtually simultaneously as part of the performance. The dance was performed at the Sydney Opera House, Sadler's Wells in London, the Joyce Theater in NYC and Theatre de la Ville, Paris."Space, Time, Dance." Digitális Fotó Magazine (Hungary). Varga Miklós. 2005.

Artist-In-Residence

*2014 – NYU / Tisch Department of Dance and New Media
*2012 – Syracuse University

Selected Exhibits (1983-2019)

Exbibits include:

* The International Center of Photography, NYC
* French Foundation of Photography, France
* Musee de L'Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland
* The Tel Aviv Art Museum, Israel
* The Erarta Contemporary Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia
* The Venice Biennale, Italy
* Mikimoto Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
* Nordic Light Festival, Norway
* Jacob's Pillow Festival, US
* Pingyao Festival, China
* Melbourne Arts Festival, Australia
* The New Zealand Festival of Arts
* Bienal de Danza de Cali, Colombia
* Urban Art Festival, Shenzen, China

Collections

* The International Center of Photography
* Musee de L'Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland
* New York Library for the Performing Arts
* Harvard Art Museums, Boston, MA
* Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
* Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum
* Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson
* Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, France
* The National Museum of Dance, Saratoga Springs, NY
* Solari Foundation Photography Collection, Tempe, AZ
* The Southeast Museum of Photography, Daytona Beach, FL
* Center for Creative Arts, St. Louis, MO
* Lafayette College, Easton, PA
* The Avon Collection, NYC

Awards and honors

* 2018 – Artist Inspiration Awakening Award – Rubans Rouges Dance
* 2016 – Lifetime Achievement Award – McCallum Theatre Institute
* 2015 – Dance in Focus Award – The Film Society of Lincoln Center and Dance Films Associatio

* 2005 – Dance Theater Workshop/Live Arts NYC
* AWARDS - Hasselblad, Graphis, Creativity, The One Club

Books

* ''Breaking Bounds: The Dance Photography of Lois Greenfield'', 1992, Text by William A. Ewing (Thames & Hudson Ltd. UK & France; Chronicle Books USA; JICC, Japan).
* ''Airborne: The New Dance Photography of Lois Greenfield'', 1998, Text by William A. Ewing (Thames & Hudson Ltd. UK; Chronicle Books USA).
* ''Lois Greenfield: Moving Still'', 2015, Text by William A. Ewing (Thames & Hudson Ltd. UK; Chronicle Books USA).

References

Further reading

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External links

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ASMP New York Presents ''Moving Still:'' A Conversation with Lois Greenfield 2017Thames & Hudsons's Andrew Sanigar interviews Lois Greenfield at Photo London 2016

{{DEFAULTSORT:Greenfield, Lois
American photographers
Brandeis University alumni
1949 births
Living people
American women photographers