ABSTRACT
Photographers have been shooting theatre and dance since the late 1850s. Initially, they focused on creating portraits of actors and dancers, sometimes in character but always shot in the studio. It was not until aer 1901 that the practice of photographing scenes from plays emerged, though these scenes were not shot during performances but restaged for the camera at special photo calls, a procedure that persists to this day. e photographic practice known as performance documentation began in the 1950s and developed alongside the evolution of performance art from Happenings on. Although theatre, dance, and performance art works are now regularly captured on video, still photography remains the predominant form of performance documentation. is practice has given rise to both theoretical speculation and practical concern about how best to document performances, not least because still photography seems incompatible with time-based forms, and also because seeking to capture performance at all seems to some to betray performance’s intrinsic ephemerality.
