Meet Martha Swope, the Legendary Broadway Photographer Who Captured Iconic Moments From Hundreds of Productions and Rehearsals She spent nearly 40 years taking theater and dance pictures, providing glimpses behind the scenes and creating images that the public couldn’t otherwise access Stephanie Rudig - Freelance Writer June 11, 2025 Photographer Martha Swope sitting on a floor covered with prints of her photos in 1987 Andrea Legge / © NYPL Martha Swope wanted to be a dancer. She moved from her home state of Texas to New York to attend the School of American Ballet, hoping to start a career in dance. Swope also happened to be an amateur photographer. So, in 1957, a fellow classmate invited her to bring her camera and document rehearsals for a little theater show he was working on. The classmate was director and choreographer Jerome Robbins, and the show was West Side Story. One of those rehearsal shots ended up in Life magazine, and Swope quickly started getting professional bookings. It’s notoriously tough to make it on Broadway, but through photography, Swope carved out a career capturing theater and dance. Over the course of nearly four decades, she photographed hundreds more rehearsals, productions and promotional studio shots. Unidentified male chorus members dancing during rehearsals for musical West Side Story in 1957 Martha Swope / © NYPL At a time when live performances were not often or easily captured, Swope’s photographs caught the animated moments and distilled the essence of a show into a single image: André De Shields clad in a jumpsuit as the title character in The Wiz, Patti LuPone with her arms raised overhead in Evita, the cast of Cats leaping in feline formations, a close-up of a forlorn Sheryl Lee Ralph in Dreamgirls and the row of dancers obscuring their faces with their headshots in A Chorus Line were all captured by Swope’s camera. She was also the house photographer for the New York City Ballet and the Martha Graham Dance Company and photographed other major dance companies such as the Ailey School. Her vision of the stage became fairly ubiquitous, with Playbill reporting that in the late 1970s, two-thirds of Broadway productions were photographed by Swope, meaning her work dominated theater and dance coverage. Carol Rosegg was early in her photography career when she heard that Swope was looking for an assistant. “I didn't frankly even know who she was,” Rosegg says. “Then the press agent who told me said, ‘Pick up any New York Times and you’ll find out.’” Swope’s background as a dancer likely equipped her to press the shutter at the exact right moment to capture movement, and to know when everyone on stage was precisely posed. She taught herself photography and early on used a Brownie camera, a simple box model made by Kodak. “She was what she described as ‘a dancer with a Brownie,’” says Barbara Stratyner, a historian of the performing arts who curated exhibitions of Swope’s work at the New York Public Library. An ensemble of dancers in rehearsal for the stage production Cats in 1982 Martha Swope / © NYPL “Dance was her first love,” Rosegg says. “She knew everything about dance. She would never use a photo of a dancer whose foot was wrong; the feet had to be perfect.” According to Rosegg, once the photo subjects knew she was shooting, “the anxiety level came down a little bit.” They knew that they’d look good in the resulting photos, and they likely trusted her intuition as a fellow dancer. Swope moved with the bearing of a dancer and often stood with her feet in ballet’s fourth position while she shot. She continued to take dance classes throughout her life, including at the prestigious Martha Graham School. Stratyner says, “As Graham got older, [Swope] was, I think, the only person who was allowed to photograph rehearsals, because Graham didn’t want rehearsals shown.” Photographic technology and the theater and dance landscapes evolved greatly over the course of Swope’s career. Rosegg points out that at the start of her own career, cameras didn’t even automatically advance the film after each shot. She explains the delicate nature of working with film, saying, “When you were shooting film, you actually had to compose, because you had 35 shots and then you had to change your film.” Swope also worked during a period of changing over from all black-and-white photos to a mixture of black-and-white and color photography. Rosegg notes that simultaneously, Swope would shoot black-and-white, and she herself would shoot color. Looking at Swope’s portfolio is also an examination of increasingly crisp photo production. Advances in photography made shooting in the dark or capturing subjects under blinding stage lights easier, and they allowed for better zooming in from afar. Martha Graham rehearses dancer Takako Asakawa and others in Heretic, a dance work choreographed by Graham, in 1986 Martha Swope / © NYPL It’s much more common nowadays to get a look behind the curtain of theater productions via social media. “The theater photographers of today need to supply so much content,” Rosegg says. “We didn’t have any of that, and getting to go backstage was kind of a big deal.” Photographers coming to document a rehearsal once might have been seen as an intrusion, but now, as Rosegg puts it, “everybody is desperate for you to come, and if you’re not there, they’re shooting it on their iPhone.” Even with exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the hottest tickets in town and the biggest stars of the day, Swope remained unpretentious. She lived and worked in a brownstone with her apartment above her studio, where the film was developed in a closet and the bathroom served as a darkroom. Rosegg recalls that a phone sat in the darkroom so they could be reached while printing, and she would be amazed at the big-name producers and theater glitterati who rang in while she was making prints in an unventilated space. From left to right: Paul Winfield, Ruby Dee, Marsha Jackson and Denzel Washington in the stage production Checkmates in 1988 Martha Swope / © NYPL Swope’s approachability extended to how she chose to preserve her work. She originally sold her body of work to Time Life, and, according to Stratyner, she was unhappy with the way the photos became relatively inaccessible. She took back the rights to her collection and donated it to the New York Public Library, where many photos can be accessed by researchers in person, and the entire array of photos is available online to the public in the Digital Collections. Searching “Martha Swope” yields over 50,000 items from more than 800 productions, featuring a huge variety of figures, from a white-suited John Travolta busting a disco move in Saturday Night Fever to Andrew Lloyd Webber with Nancy Reagan at a performance of Phantom of the Opera. Swope’s extensive career was recognized in 2004 with a special Tony Award, a Tony Honors for Excellence in Theater, which are given intermittently to notable figures in theater who operate outside of traditional awards categories. She also received a lifetime achievement award from the League of Professional Theater Women in 2007. Though she retired in 1994 and died in 2017, her work still reverberates through dance and Broadway history today. For decades, she captured the fleeting moments of theater that would otherwise never be seen by the public. And her passion was clear and straightforward. As she once told an interviewer: “I’m not interested in what’s going on on my side of the camera. I’m interested in what’s happening on the other side.” Get the latest Travel & Culture stories in your inbox.

SYNDICATE WORKFORCE SOLUTIONS is partnering with a leading-edge client to identify a Staff Rendering Systems Engineer / Architect in Newark, CA. This opportunity is ideal for a technical visionary ready to lead rendering infrastructure initiatives at the forefront of visual effects, automotive visualization, and simulation technology. We are specifically seeking individuals with world-class experience at studios involving high-performance render-intensive environments. If you’ve helped build the rendering backbone behind iconic animated or VFX-heavy productions, we want you on this team. About the Role The Staff Rendering Systems Engineer will architect and optimize rendering infrastructure for high-performance, scalable operations. You will work cross-functionally with engineering and production teams to enhance pipeline efficiency, implement automation, and solve complex technical issues in rendering workflows. You’ll also provide thought leadership in infrastructure planning and help shape a secure and future-ready rendering technology roadmap. Key Responsibilities Define and implement architectural strategies for scalable rendering infrastructure and workflows. Oversee and optimize Deadline render farm configuration for performance, efficiency, and scalability. Automate rendering pipeline tasks using Bash, Python, SQL, and Ruby to improve throughput and reduce manual overhead. Lead research and implementation of cloud-based rendering technologies. Collaborate with cross-functional teams to troubleshoot rendering issues and ensure system performance. Establish and maintain best practices for security, reliability, and system scalability. Advise on OS lifecycle management, virtualization, and package management. Participate in high-level architectural planning to align with business and technology goals. Required Qualifications Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Engineering, or equivalent technical field. 8+ years of hands-on experience managing render farms, preferably within CGI/VFX production environments. Strong experience with rendering pipelines and farm management tools such as Deadline. Proven expertise in large-scale rendering infrastructure design and maintenance. Background working in or supporting large design studios specializing in visual effects, animation, or interactive content production. Technical Skills Strong knowledge of server hardware, storage systems, and GPU/CPU rendering technologies. Fluency in scripting languages (Bash, Python, SQL, Ruby). Familiarity with virtualization, OS management, and performance optimization. Understanding of render farm automation, security principles, and DevOps-style deployment. How to Apply Submit your resume to Resumes@swfs.ai today and take the next step in your professional journey with SYNDICATE WORKFORCE SOLUTIONS – Empowering Talent. Advancing Technology. Driving Innovation.

Warning: contains spoilers for Doctor Who episode “The Reality War.” In Doctor Who’s frankly mind-boggling season finale, the Doctor’s epic battle with the two Ranis, Omega, Conrad and a herd of skyscraper-sized bone creatures ultimately comes down to the restoration of a single life – and will require a sacrifice nobody expected. Spoilers ahead. It’s honestly difficult to know where to start with this episode. There are so many potential jumping-off points for discussion – though, somewhat tellingly, very few of them relate to the actual story that kicked off in earnest last week, which the episode itself seems positively impatient to get out of the way. It takes about 15 minutes for the Doctor to stop hugging every member of the extended supporting cast so the titular war can kick off, then by the halfway mark it’s over. Audacious? Yes, though that’s not to say it actually works. Do we start with Billie Piper? Or the unexpected and quite charming Jodie Whittaker cameo? Or the fact that they somehow snuck Ncuti Gatwa’s regeneration onto the screen without anybody knowing? No, because this season didn’t start with Billie Piper, or Jodie Whittaker, or the Rani, or Ruby Sunday. It didn’t even start with the Doctor. It started with Belinda Chandra. A character with so much potential – compassionate, uncertain, a little bit spiky, competent in a new and interesting way, compellingly distrustful of the Doctor. Potential that has, at this point, been mostly wasted. There is a point in “The Reality War” where Belinda basically tells the Doctor “OK I think I’m done contributing to this episode, good luck tho” and is left holding the baby in a soundproofed box where she can neither affect or be affected by the story happening outside. We even have an unintentionally comical cut back to her standing in there, doing nothing, saying nothing. It’s hard to think of a more literal way to sideline a key player. This is the co-lead of the show! The companion! And instead of having any real agency, instead of contributing to the plot in any meaningful way whatsoever, she functionally stops existing as a narrative presence. She doesn’t even get to go with the Doctor when he rushes off to save what turns out to be her child. And for what? So that the companion who supposedly left the show last season can have all the big dramatic moments instead? There were no advanced screeners available for this episode – given what happens at the end, it’s easy to see what they were scared might leak – so I’m writing with less distance than usual, reacting fairly rapidly to a first watch. But even with several days to digest, it’s difficult to imagine feeling anything other than bafflement at this storytelling choice. This is what Belinda’s whole story arc was leading to? This is the big twist? It’s truly one of the most bewildering decisions that Russell T Davies has made. It already kind of felt like he’d run out of meaningful stuff for Belinda to do after “The Well”, and there have been plenty of complaints about her sidelining in “Wish World”, but nobody could have predicted this. Sorry Belinda. And sorry Varada Sethu. You both deserved better. Now to Ncuti Gatwa. It’s pointless getting into behind-the-scenes gossip, or speculating on the actor’s motivations – if he only ever wanted to do two seasons, of course that’s his choice. But what are we to take away from his brief tenure in storytelling and character terms? A Doctor defined by his joy, his exuberance, his love for people (frustratingly, a point this episode hammers until it becomes tedious). A smile as powerful as a billion supernovas. A killer wardrobe. Even in lesser episodes, Gatwa’s energy has carried us along, infectious and delightful. It’s a genuine shock and a shame to see him go. Join our mailing list Get the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox! Not least because, as with Belinda, it feels like his Doctor had unfulfilled potential. Was this episode truly a satisfying conclusion to Fifteen’s story? He gets plenty of good moments, big and small, and of course he plays the hell out of all of them. You could argue that sacrificing their life to save one child is about the most Doctor-ish thing possible. I wouldn’t necessarily argue with you. But that’s broad strokes stuff, generally applicable to any incarnation. What about this Doctor makes this specific set of circumstances a fitting send-off? Is it satisfying for this Doctor, a Doctor representing a particular streak of joyful hedonism, a Doctor who releases UNIT from their stifling roles in Conrad’s reactionary wish world via an explicit and triumphant assertion of his queerness, to go out in this way, for these reasons? It just doesn’t feel like that’s what these past two seasons – the bi-generation, his relationship with Rogue, his torturing of Kid, the seemingly forgotten Susan stuff – have been leading to. It’s a shame that the episode also feels so messy on a minute-to-minute level. There are individually effective moments – Dark Souls boss Omega is a fantastic visual, and him casually munching The Rani is enjoyably WTF (though I can’t help wishing they’d offed the other one and kept Archie Panjabi around). The moment with the Doctor and Belinda passing Poppy’s jacket back and forth and folding it until it vanishes is kind of jaw-dropping in how understated and upsetting it is. Anita’s first joke about being in hospitality is funny (the second and third iterations not so much). Millie Gibson does a great job, even if it feels like a misstep to give Ruby so much heavy lifting to do instead of Belinda. But the whole thing feels so all over the place that not even Gatwa’s megastar energy can hold it together. And now he’s gone, regenerated into Billie Piper. At this point, we have no idea when the show will be back. It’s impossible to know where this is going. And it’s hard not to feel torn – on the one hand, Billie Piper is a fantastic actor, and it’s fascinating to consider what her take on the role will be (though it should be noted that the credits pointedly don’t say “Billie Piper as The Doctor”, whatever that could mean). On the other hand, didn’t we just do this? We had the second Tennant Doctor, it was a lovely gift for fans that wrapped up some loose ends and gave everyone a big warm glow for the anniversary, and then we flew off with Ncuti Gatwa, an actor who couldn’t have screamed more loudly that things were going to be different. But now we’re looking backwards again. And as fun a surprise as Piper’s appearance is, as fully as she will no doubt own the role… it feels like another retrograde move. It’s Doctor Who celebrating itself, getting lost in its own mythos, turning inward. And so we end this oh-so promising season in a strange, unsettling place. An episode that doesn’t really seem to care that much about the story it claimed to be telling, which makes discussing it seem weirdly beside the point. A show in limbo. A whole incarnation of the Doctor gone, when we’d barely started to get to know him. A promising companion wasted. A showrunner everyone expected to be a safe pair of hands making some utterly confounding choices. Where do we go from here? Doctor Who series 15 is available to stream now on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney+ around the world.