Peggy Jarrell Kapplan, a New York based photographer, has been taking portraits of dance makers since the 1970’s. From Trisha Brown to William Forsythe there is barely a choreographer she has not captured on her (film based) camera.
The Coda Oslo International Dance Festival is hosting an exhibition of the photographers work with many participants, both past and present, being part of that exhibition,
In our interview Ms Kaplan talks about getting her start in photography and the ongoing project to capture every dance maker there has ever been in a portrait. You want to know the craziest thing? It’s not even her job! It’s all about the passion.
Peggy Jarrell Kaplan’s photographs have been exhibited in international dance festivals, most recently at Tanz Im August and Dublin Dance Festival. Her portraits were selected to be part of Pina Bausch’s 2004 Festival and were included in the Mikhail Baryshnikov White Oak Dance Project’s PASTforward international traveling tour. Her portraits of Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, and underground artists from the Soviet Union have been widely reproduced. Her work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum in New York.
From an historical point of view Ms Kaplan has been there from almost the start of the post modern movement in New York back in the day through the emergence of Pina Bausch and many other luminaries of the dance world.
Unfortunate there is no website for further information but if you want to see of her work in exhibition then they do pop up all over the world from time to time so keep your eyes open.
Filmed at Dansens Hus, Oslo, Norway on October 20th 2011. Video brought to you with the support, in part, of Arts Council England and Coda Oslo Dance Festival.