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ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Dance in another dimension: the photographic work of Lois Greenfield

Kosstrin, Hannah Joy
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1407225160

Abstract Details

2003, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Dance.
This study investigates the work of photographer Lois Greenfield as an integral contribution to dance history and photography. As a photographer who works in the medium of postmodern dance, Greenfield says she does not document the work of choreographers, but rather she uses dancers to create scenes in her photographs through a variety of methods involving dancers dancing and improvising in her studio. Further questions addressed in this study investigate the aesthetic quality of motion portrayed in a Greenfield image, as she does capture a living, four-dimensional art form in two dimensions; and what, if any, documentary nature remains inherent in Greenfield’s photographs of specific choreographies. In this study I use a modernist analysis to examine four Greenfield images of the Bebe Miller Company. Research methods for this study center on phenomenological hermeneutics as defined by dance researcher JoAnn McNamara. McNamara, who builds upon the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, discusses hermeneutics as a mode of inquiry that provides an “anti-objectivist” reading of a text.1 This methodology entails drawing from outside sources to make inferences. The texts in this research are the Bebe Miller Company photographs. I draw my conclusions by analyzing them for what they are and also by drawing upon outside resources--interviews with both Greenfield and Miller, and video viewings of the actual Miller works portrayed in the images. In addition, similar text-reading methods of dance historian Lynn Matluck Brooks, who builds upon McNamara’s hermeneutics, and photography critic Terry Barrett’s methods of viewing images, add to the approach of investigating these photographs. This study explores new research areas at the intersection of art and documentation while questioning the roles of the choreographer and the photographer in preserving the moment of movement. In this thesis I engage the complexities presented by Greenfield’s work: photograph as record versus photograph as art of dance versus photograph as autonomous art form. Through the collaborative improvisational structure she establishes in her studio, Greenfield creates new dance moments in her photographs, which present the form of the dancers’ bodies in space as the content of the images. _______________________ 1 JoAnn McNamara, “Dance in the Hermeneutic Circle,” Researching Dance: Evolving Modes of Inquiry, ed. Sondra Horton Fraleigh and Penelope Hanstein (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999) 163.
Karen Eliot (Advisor)
Angelika Gerbes (Committee Member)
Terry Barrett (Committee Member)
128 p.
Dance

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Kosstrin, H. J. (2003). Dance in another dimension: the photographic work of Lois Greenfield [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1407225160

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Kosstrin, Hannah. Dance in another dimension: the photographic work of Lois Greenfield. 2003. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1407225160.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Kosstrin, Hannah. "Dance in another dimension: the photographic work of Lois Greenfield." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2003. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1407225160

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1407225160
366
© 2003, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.