Getty Museum
Erick Hawkins - American Document
Creator
Barbara MorganAmerican Photographer · 1900–1992
All works by this person →>We didn't have very much money, so [my husband] set up our darkroom in the bathroom. Every time I went to the bathroom, I learned about photography, because there would be [his] negatives hanging and dangling, and prints washing in trays...I never studied photography, I absorbed it. Barbara Morgan grew up in California and studied painting at the University of California at Los Angeles. Upon grad
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1938–1941
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
>This is one man/ this is one million men/ this man has a power. It is himself, and you... During the performance of choreographer Martha Graham's historical dance piece *American Document,* these lines and others were spoken on the stage to bring the action of the dance into focus. *American Document* is essentially a documentary through dance, progressing from the pre-Columbian Native American era through the Puritan period, Emancipation, and the early twentieth century. From the passage of the chronological work entitled "Now," dancer Erick Hawkins is shown in a bold, assertive stride, his right hand outstretched in a pantomime greeting, his motion simultaneously frozen and defined. Barbara Morgan's dramatically lit photograph emphasizes the powerful gesture of the dancer's half-silhouetted body against the white backdrop.
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