Letter to the World ("Dear March, Come In!").
Printed 1977.
Price: $2,000.00
About the item
Gelatin silver print, mounted, signed ("Barbara Morgan—1940) lower right beneath image and titled lower left, and stamped and docketed on the verso by the photographer. 10-1/4 x 13-1/4 inches. Miniscule scuff to lower right edge of image, dampstain to lower right corner of mount. Martha Graham, Sixteen Dances in Photographs (1980), p. 120.
Item #309454
Photograph by celebrated dance photographer Barbara Morgan of Martha Graham as One Who Dances and Merce Cunningham as March, in a 1940 performance of Letter to the World
Letter to the World premiered on August 11, 1940 and was based on the life of Emily Dickinson. It has been called "the first authentically American Ballet" and a masterpiece.
Here we see Martha Graham, who was the first dancer to perform at the White House, and whose technique, the Graham technique, reshaped American dance. Graham refused to let her dances be recorded, because she believed they ought to exist on stage. Her collaborations with photographer Barbara Morgan in the 1940s led to iconic images such as this.
