Barbara Morgan described the performance “Lamentation” by Martha Graham as a &ld

Barbara Morgan described the performance “Lamentation” by Martha Graham as a “dance of sorrow … the personification of grief itself.” Working to portray the melancholy essence of the dance and to capture its “visual peak,” Morgan produced a dramatically diagonal image of the American modern dance pioneer. Though Graham leans on a bench, her arms and legs extend expressively to stretch the dark fabric that envelops her—a material that, according to the dancer, “indicate[s] the tragedy that obsesses the body, the ability to stretch inside your own skin, to witness and test the perimeters and boundaries of grief.”See this photograph on view in our newest installation “Elegy: Lament in the 20th Century.”“Martha Graham - Lamentation,” 1935 (negative); c. 1981 (print), by Barbara Morgan © Barbara Morgan, the Barbara Morgan Archive -- source link

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