Barbara Morgan American, 1900-1992 Barbara Morgan (born Barbara Brooks Johnson) was raised in southern California and studied painting and printmaking at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1925 she married writer and photographer Willard Morgan and joined the art faculty at UCLA, teaching there until 1930, when she and her husband moved to New York City. Morgan worked primarily as a painter until 1935, then turned to photography. During a career that spanned more than five decades, Morgan became known for her dramatic photographs of modern dance and for her abstract light drawings, photomontages, portraits, and nature studies. Interested in Eastern philosophy and Native American culture, she sought to express in her work the "inner life forces" of nature. Morgan's celebrated images of Martha Graham, José Limon, Valerie Bettis, and Merce Cunningham demonstrate her interpretive approach by transcending simple documentation of dance performances to create photographic expressions of great feeling, imagination, and spirit. M.M.