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. Greenfield has since specialized in photographing dancers in her photo studio as part of her exploration of the expressive potential of movement.

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. Based in New York City, she gives workshops and lectures in schools around the world.

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. 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.

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. 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."

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. 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.

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, Shenzhen, 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 Association 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).