Lois Greenfield

I shoot just one moment at a time. ... These moments are beneath the threshold of perception, it's often a moment when (the dancers are) falling, or they're going up, or two people are about to touch or something like that. Those moments are more expressive than the typical dance photo of someone in a perfect position on the ground or in the air.

Lois Greenfield

And out of this improvisation comes a moment that can't be part of a dance, it becomes more of a personal moment, a moment about expressive gestures. And they're often, I call them, enigmatic or ambiguous moments.

Lois Greenfield

Working improvisationally in my studio with dancers, it's completely different, we don't have any starting point, we don't have an end point. We don't have anything we are trying to show or do. The picture evolves from nowhere.

Lois Greenfield

In some ways dance and photography are antithetical. Because (dance) happens in 360 degrees of space, according to musical intervals, a choreographed dance has to be performed in sequence; it's not just isolated movements. But I'm extracting one split second, which nonetheless kind of represents a sequence or is like a split-second dance.

Lois Greenfield

It's a good example of 'moving still,' because she's moving and the ribbon becomes like a sculpture, it's really a very simple shot, and it's just what I like to call a miracle moment. ... It's just the right moment, where you feel that she's running in (the ribbon).

Lois Greenfield

The pictures are in color. ... But for the most part, the colors are just the skin tones of the person, the backgrounds are either white, gray or black. And the clothing or fabrics are very, very neutral. I don't think it reads like color. I'm not looking at a colorful carnival.

Lois Greenfield

He was basically juxtaposing pictures that seemed to tell a story when put side by side, either one dancer's movement led into the other picture or maybe there was a relationship between the dancers' shapes. ... He had a design strategy of pairing images that became very exciting, because the connotation of (one) picture could be expanded by the juxtaposition to another picture.

Lois Greenfield

I want (viewers) to contemplate the mystery of what I'm presenting, because people don't know how I did it or what it is or why it is. I'd like them to enjoy that mystery and make it their own.

Lois Greenfield

My interest in photography is not to capture an image I see or even have in my mind, but to explore the potential of moments I can only begin to imagine.

Lois Greenfield

see i-can moments mind

My inspiration has always been photography's ability to stop time and reveal what the naked eye cannot see.

Lois Greenfield

stop naked eye time

What intrigues me is making images that confound and confuse the viewer but that the viewer knows, or suspects, really happened.

Lois Greenfield

images making me happened

Being called a dance photographer makes me bristle. You might say that dance is my landscape. The root of my interest is movement or, rather, how movement can be interpreted photographically, and dance provides a perfect opportunity for this.

Lois Greenfield

me you dance opportunity

If I knew what the photograph was going to look like, I wouldn't bother taking it. It's the voyage of discovery that fascinates me.

Lois Greenfield

like look me photograph

I realized that one of the differences between news photography and dance photography was that the former has to tell a specific story, whereas all a dance photograph had to be was visually interesting.

Lois Greenfield

story news differences dance

I don't digitally manipulate my images, because I am interested in the spontaneous act of creating images without forethought. I know many artists start with an idea in mind, and then they put it on paper. I don't work that way.

Lois Greenfield

i-am mind work way

The ostensible subject of my photographs may be motion, but the subtext is time. A dancer's movements illustrate the passage of time, giving it a substance, materiality, and space. In my photographs, time is stopped, a split second becomes an eternity, and an ephemeral moment is solid as sculpture.

Lois Greenfield

moment space time giving