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Lois Greenfield (born 1949) is a photographer made famous by her ability to capture the human form in motion and her use of it as a compositional element in her art. She has been compared with Eadweard Muybridge for exploration of human locomotion, and with Henri Cartier-Bresson for capturing the elusive moment.

She studied anthropology and filmmaking at Brandeis University in the late 1960s. After graduating in 1970, she worked as a freelance photographer in Boston photographing for small independent publications covering everything from rock stars to riots. Having had no formal training in photography, she learned with each project she encountered.

For an assignment, Greenfield was sent to cover a dance concert, a subject in which she had no professional experience. She photographed dress rehearsals of dance performances in Boston and when she moved to New York in 1973. As a result, she built a body of work and a reputation in the modern and postmodern dance world through having her work published in the Village Voice, New York Times, Dance Magazine and other publications.

"By 1978 I had become increasingly dissatisfied with a documentary approach. I didn’t want to be limited to trying to snatch a moment from a distance at a dress rehearsal. I wanted the ability to shape and refine the moment as a photograph. I wanted more control of my subjects and their representation. The dynamic relationship between the picture’s frame and the subject excited me the most. Taken as a literal boundary for the dancers, the negative’s black border intensifies the explosive energy of the movement within. Cropping into the dancer’s bodies, the frame creates unexpected entrances and exits. The viewer begins to consider “off screen” space in relation to depicted space. The square format also allows us to re-conceive our perception of gravity, with all four sides of the square exerting an equal gravitational pull on the subjects within.”

Lois Greenfield works in New York for periodicals including Sports Illustrated, Time, Elle, Vogue, Life, and The New York Times. She shoots all the major contemporary dance companies including the American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Paul Taylor Dance Company, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and Parsons Dance Company. Greenfield's work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. Her newest venture has taken her career full circle, collaborating and performing around the world with the Australian Dance Theatre in "Held", a dance inspired by her photography in which she shoots the live action as part of the performance.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lois Greenfield", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0