Born 1900, Buffalo, Kansas
Died 1992


Morgan grew up on a peach ranch in southern California. She studied art from 1919 to 1923 at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she later taught design, landscape painting, and woodcut printing (1925–30). In 1930 she moved to New York with her husband, the photographer and photo-historian Willard D. Morgan, with whom she later founded the publishing company Morgan & Morgan. She began photographing in the early 1930s, inspired by Edward Weston's work. Best known for her photographs of the Martha Graham dance company, Morgan documented the major modern dancers of her generation, including Merce Cunningham, Doris Humphrey, and José Limón. Also a practitioner of street photography and photomontage, she was an early member of the Photo League; she later participated in the exhibition "This Is the Photo League" (1948–49). In 1952 she was one of the founders of the Aperture Foundation. In 1975 she was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1988 a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers. Her work appeared in the exhibitions "Breadth of Vision: Portfolios of Women Photographers" at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York (1975) and "The Women of the Photo League" at Higher Pictures Gallery, New York (2009).