about the photographer
Bio
When Yi-Chun first began taking photographs, her dream was to be a photojournalist. After finishing her graduate study in Library Information, she started working with Lois Greenfield, an American master dance photographer, as an assistant, managing the studio digital asset system and assisting photo shooting since 2006. Through the encouragement of Lois and support from Jack Deaso, the studio manager, Yi-Chun started to photograph all kinds of dance dress rehearsals, performances, and dance festivals. As many choreographers and dancers pointed out, she got the nature instinct of catching the expression of dance.
In past fifteen years, she has worked with so many dancers and dance companies all over the world: over hundreds of American, European and Asian companies, and many hundreds of dancers. This included companies as well-known as the Paris Opera Ballet, The Royal Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Nederlands Dans Theater 2, Batsheva, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Guangdong Modern Dance Company, CCDC, BeijingDance/ LDTX, Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance, Martha Graham Dance Company, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Pilobolus, Momix, Trisha Brown Dance Company, Twyla Tharp, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, etc. She was the house photographer for NYLA (previous known as Dance Theater Workshop) for 3 years and a contract photographer for MoMA's Performing Art Series, Singapore da:ns festival, and Guangdong Dance Festival. She is also the official photographer of several dance festivals in New York City.
Photographs by her have been collected and published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Straits Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Huffington Post, The Village Voice, Back Stage, amNewYork, Metro New York, Taipei Times, Dance Magazine, Dancer Magazine, Frieze Magazine, Tate Etc, Journal of Aesthetic Education, Par Magazine, Dance Research Journal, to name a few.
Yi-Chun is frequently sent on photo assignments for Deborah Jowitt, a master dance critic, for the Village Voice and her dance blog (Arts Journal DanceBeat). Quinn Bastson, another well-known dance critic, also wrote, “With the exceptions of Yi-Chun Wu, Steven Schreiber, and Julieta Cervantes, few performance photographers make consistently exciting images that capture the essence of a dance piece.” - Quinn Batson, Brooklyn Rail