. . . nearly an infinite number of times, and often asked myself, Why does this woman, who isn’t a particularly interesting photographer, have a monopoly on snapping photos of people in the arts? Of course, in those days answers weren’t a Google click away, so I wasn’t quite interested enough in the answer to find out more about her. But now, as an orphan from the storm, I decided to take this opportunity to discover more about a woman whose name up until then had done little more than trigger memories of hot wax and tedium.     

And what I discovered about Martha Swope pleased me immensely. Not because I discovered that she was a great photographer, but that without her willingness to shoot photos endlessly, we would be without hundreds of thousands of historically interesting photos of the New York dance and theater world. And it’s also true that some of the photos in the show have great charm. The one of Geoffrey Holder, for instance, as always bigger than life, teaching Munchkins some movements for The Wiz, and  a photo of Liza, Chita, Kander, and Ebb sitting on the rehearsal floor for The Rink hugging one another and looking totally euphoric, and of Balanchine and Arthur Mitchell “doing choreography” at a benefit performance for The Dance Theater of Harlem in 1971, and shots of Stravinsky, Martha Graham, the alienly-handsome Jaques d’Amboise, early Baryshnikov and Bruhn, Sondheim, Bernstein, and many other delights are there to be sampled in this show. 

The question “Why Martha Swope?” was not sufficiently answered, however, until toward the end of the exhibit when I heard a little metal box whispering softly in a corner. This box held a 1979 audio interview between Swope and Walter Terry, a critic and author on dance. I clasped the attached headset over my ears and in moments I fell for Martha hook, line, and sinker. I could have listened to this woman for hours, enjoying her humility, practicality, charm, and insights, and if you make it to the show I suggest you enjoy listening to this fascinating recording before looking at the many images. I’ve read a few things about this show but no one I know of has stressed this most important point, and I assure you it does make the show much more exciting. Not doing so is a bit like watching TV with the sound off. 

It turns out that from 1957 until 1994, for 37 years Ms. Swope was the Clydesdale of documentarians for the theater arts, which is well documented by the fact that the library has acquired well over 1,500,000 of her images. And although in the interview it seemed that Terry at times was trying to have her claim to be a greater photographer than she was, she kept bringing him back to reality, which I found totally refreshing. She told him that one day she’d simply picked up a Brownie camera and just learned photography as she went along, primarily from asking questions of the people behind the counters in various camera stores. Nor did she make pretensions about her origins, stating that she was born in Waco, Texas, which I believe is better known as the home of Dr. Pepper than for being a cultural hub. And in Waco, she began to learn dance, including tap dance, ballet, and Mexican hat dancing. Ole!

When she first moved to New York City, she studied at SAB, the School of American Ballet, but little by little shifted toward photography. Taking photos of friends from the school, teachers, and others and one fine day in 1957 her old SAB friend, Jerome Robbins, asked her if she’d like to come and photograph a rehearsal of a little show he was putting on called . . . guess what? West Side Story! boy, boy, crazy boy! And where do you suppose these first photos ended up? Life magazine! An auspicious beginning for any photographer. Before long, with an angel continuing to sit firmly on her  shoulder, Lincoln Kirstein, a connoisseur of the arts, invited Martha to take photos of the New York City Ballet, which he had co-founded with Balanchine. And by the time you could say “Guadalajara” three times backwards, this one-time Mexican hat dancer was snapping her Brownie at the most important dancers and actors in the New York City theater world. And from the interview, I realized just how focused, dedicated, and impassioned Martha was about her career. Perhaps this dedication is shown most obviously in her work photographing the Martha Graham company. Most photographers would just go in and start snapping, but not Martha Swope. Before starting to photograph Graham and her company, Swope decided to study the Graham technique for 1 and 1/2 years so she would understand exactly what she was photographing. Wow!

Martha Swope’s practicality, humility, and love for the artists is displayed beautifully in a quote from the Terry interview where she states, “When you chose to click, is the sum total of what you bring to it. . . . I think that photography is a craft, a tool.  The art is in front of the camera. The art is the dancer . . . the actor. As a craftsman, you take from what they are giving, what pleases you and what touches you, and you hope, I hope, that when people look at one of my pictures they say: ‘Wonderful! This is what I saw. This is the way the dancer looked. This is what happened.’”

And in these few words, she encapsulated the essence of her invaluable contribution to the New York City art world.