The best photographer of dance
There seems to be a consensus among the dance establishment that performance photographs are no good, and that therefore if you want to make a worthwhile dance photo, it has to be posed in the studio, or time-lapse-exposed, or artsy-fartsily gimmicked up. And indeed most performance photos are not good. But those of Fred Fehl are outstandingly superlatively excellent. He singlehandedly disproves the consensus sketched above. Fred Fehl's photos can be as alarmingly vivid as snapshots, but they also derive from perfect knowledge of the climactic and para-climactic moments of each individual ballet. They confirm and extend what can be learned from videos and reviews of the dancers featured - in this book, as it happens, practically every dancer you've ever heard of.
We should be cautious of making the type of statement I'm about to make, but here goes: Fred Fehl is an unjustly neglected master (neglected in the sense that his books aren't in print); and everybody interested in dance should get his books. And I mean it.