Breaking bounds

About this book

In 1982 an event took place in the career of the New York photographer Lois Greenfield which was to lead to some of the most inventive representations of dance in the history of photography. Early that year, Greenfield met and decided to photograph two young dancers, David Parsons and Daniel Ezralow. She used for the initial session - and for the first time - a borrowed Hasselblad camera. Her excitement at the result was immediate. "I looked at the print," she says, "and. Knew I was on to something." What in fact this chance convergence of elements gave rise to was the archetypal Greenfield image: dynamic, witty, original and full of an energy so forceful that it seems contained only by the black lines of the camera frame. Breaking Bounds is a collection of 87 of these extraordinary images, taken between 1982 and 1991 and representing the best of Greenfield's mature personal work. That period saw her achieve her aim: to liberate the. Dancer from the dance. "I tell my dancers," she says, "to leave their choreography at the door," and here indeed we see dance as it has never been shown onstage. These are movements which arise through a collaboration between Greenfield and a host of dancers, unrestrained by the bounds of choreography, willing to take risks and to push to the absolute limits the boundaries of both photography and dance. This volume also represents a further collaboration between. Greenfield and the eminent photographic historian and curator William A. Ewing, who has arranged these examples of her work into five sections that he calls Solo, Duo, Restraint/Release, Fission/Fusion and Breaking Bounds. He also provides an introduction and an interview with Lois Greenfield that charts her development from a young photojournalist to one of the finest photographers of the day. Lois Greenfield is recognized internationally as among the foremost. Photographers of dance. By choosing the world of experimental dance as her subject, she has created images of unbelievable vitality which celebrate both its tremendous vigor and the power of her own vision.