Born in Buffalo, Kansas, Barbara Morgan studied art history and theory at UCLA from 1919 to 1923 and joined the UCLA faculty in 1925. Her output in those and later years was centered on drawings, prints, and paintings. Her tastes leaned toward abstract modernism and there they remained. In 1925, she married Willard Morgan, a writer who integrated photography into his articles about modern architects including Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra and others of their contemporaries. It was then that Barbara discovered the expressive potential of photography and in time she abandoned painting and printmaking in favor of photography, gravitating ultimately to recording the rise and triumph of modern dance in America. She collaborated intellectually with many leading creative artists and fellow photographers and widely taught her theory of the role of light in photography. She died at herhome in North Tarrytown, New York.