Portrait of Loie Fuller

Loie Fuller was a dancer and theatrical innovator. She started her career young, participating in plays and circuses. She became famous for her Serpentine Dance, where she incorporated her use of voluminous silk skirts that were illuminated by multicolored lighting. The photograph we’re going to be using is a photograph of Loie Fuller mid-dance.
The photograph, titled “Portrait of Loie Fuller” by Fredrick Glasier was done in 1902. This was photographed in one of Loie’s well-known, flowing outfits. It captures her clothes and herself as she was in motion, performing one of her moves. The message of this photograph was not only to use the new photography technology to capture motion, but to also show this woman doing something she was famous for. This photograph captures what Loie Fuller was so well at; it is what made her famous around the world. Even without color, this photograph captures the great detail of her art.
Fuller’s work is still seen today, 120 years after the photograph was taken⁶. In the Centre Pompidou’s “Dansez sa vie” exhibition, a silent colorized film produced by the Lumiere brothers shows a woman perfuming Fuller’s famous Serpentine Dance (Paris Update). Even though there were no moving images of Fuller performing her dances, they still managed to capture what it must have been like to witness one of them.