Daring Collaborations: Doris Ulmann and the Making of Modern Dance
Doris Ulmann captured people’s unique personalities on glass-plate negatives with her large-format camera. She summarized her quiet and methodical photographic method in stating, “whenever I am working on a portrait, I try to know the individuality or real character of my sitter and, by understanding him, succeed in making him think of the things of vital interest to him.” Between 1919 and 1933, her photography took an unexpected turn when she became fascinated with new forms of dance performed in New York City. Ulmann’s portraits of Michio Ito, Ruth St. Denis, Angna Enters, and an Isadora Duncan-inspired dance company stand out from her still studies of Appalachian and Gullah-Geechee “types.” Anomalous in her oeuvre, her photographs of dancers offer a rare record of this formative moment in the invention of modern dance.
This exhibition will be the first to gather Ulmann’s photographs of modern dancers and consider her images as important to the creation of modern dance in the United States. Special thanks to the Doris Ulmann Galleries at Berea College, University of Kentucky Special Collections, and the University of Washington Chamber Dance Company Documentary Collection for generously lending their photographs and films. This exhibition was organized in collaboration with Associate Professor of Arts Administration Jill Schinberg and developed in dialogue with Laura Neese and the UK Department of Theatre and Dance.
Image caption: Doris Ulmann, Angna Enters, circa 1931, gelatin silver print. Collection of the UK Art Museum, purchase: The Robert C. May Photography Fund.
