INTRODUCTION
Although he served as the Pillow’s staff photographer for more than four decades, John Lindquist (1890-1980) has now been absent for longer than he was onsite. And while some of his images have been regularly featured in exhibitions here—where a rotating display continues in the Special Collections Room—Jacob’s Pillow hasn’t mounted a full Lindquist show since 1997.
One compelling reason to take another look at Lindquist’s Pillow images is that their institutional home, the Harvard Theatre Collection at Houghton Library, has been comprehensively digitizing their Lindquist holdings and making them available online. This makes it possible to view literally thousands of Pillow photos which have never before been exhibited or even printed, and the images included here have been culled from more than 15,000 possibilities—all in glorious color.
Lindquist regularly presented slide shows of his Kodachrome images but almost never exhibited color prints. And so, the photos included in this exhibition are truly being seen anew. Encompassing a wide range of genres with names both famous and unfamiliar, these dancers are organized into four categories: male and female solos, duets, and groups. The resulting juxtapositions are not unlike the shared programs on which the performers appeared here, reminding us that the past continues to hold many surprises.
All photos are by John Lindquist, © Harvard Theatre Collection.