Legendary Legs: Photographer Harvey Edwards Settles in Walpole

Miles away in work and life from where he started, artist Harvey Edwards continues to create and keep people on their toes.

The photographer world-renowned for his ballet images taken in the ‘70s and ‘80s has relocated to Walpole, where local writer, Pam Bernard, is working to put his incredible life story to paper. Edwards, who has worked for more than four decades on location in New York, Los Angeles and in Europe, moved to New Hampshire for some tranquility in his home studio.

“I want to be left alone while I’m working,” he said.

It’s hard to imagine a quiet life for Edwards when his career has been anything but. He was bitten by the art bug when he took painting lessons at 10 years old. As a young teenager, he tagged along with his cousin Bruce Marks to his ballet classes in New York City.

“I noticed how much goes into (rehearsing for) a performance,” he said. “The dancers (rehearsed) 40 to 80 hours for a three-minute on-stage performance. That sweat and that work planted the seed.”

Later, Marks would become a principal dancer at New York City Ballet and the artistic director of Boston Ballet, giving Edwards full access to the dancers. His focus in the following years (the early ‘70s) was on telling a story about the hard work and suffering dancers endure for their art through his photographs. His intent was to hone in on a strong shape, expressing volumes with simplicity.

At the same time, he was struggling in his personal life, having suffered his first panic attack on the night of his wedding. His wife, Eleanor, then a fashion designer whom he met at his New York gallery, offered him a deal.

“She said, ‘I’ll give you five years to do whatever you want creatively — you don’t have to worry about a penny,’” he said.

It was a chance meeting in 1975 in Los Angeles with a dancer who needed a ride to class (and invited Edwards to observe) that ultimately catapulted his career through the stratosphere. It marked the fifth and final year of the deal his wife made with him.

That day he took a photograph of the dancer’s tattered clothing and ballet slippers secured with duct tape as she performed a plié. He titled it simply, “Leg Warmers.”

The image, reproduced as a poster, has sold more than 2 million copies in 86 countries. His photographs have also appeared in more than 200 movies, television programs, commercials and music videos.

Countless celebrities collect his work; he’s worked on projects with the likes of Robert Redford; and he’s done commissioned pieces for some notable figures. Cary Grant once hired him to photograph his daughter, also a ballet dancer.

Elvis Presley’s manager, “Colonel Tom” Parker, asked him for an oversized abstract piece for The King, which is displayed at Graceland. Edwards spoke to Presley about it.

“I got a call from him — he told me how much he loved it and that it would stay in his family,” he said.

No matter the client or on which wall his work will be hung, Edwards’s artistic process is the same.

“Say you’re sitting on a hill and below you a train is going by,” he explained. “As a landscape artist, you’d notice the mountain and the train and say that’s a beautiful image. I zero in on what motivates that train — the engine, it’s gears, the steel.

“I capture that essence of that image, what makes it work and what makes it come alive. You should look at that image and get a feeling. That’s the key to art.”

He stresses he doesn’t create art for money, however. He works solely to be able to express himself and create something beautiful.

When his panic attacks began (he struggled for years with them), he became housebound.

“The only way to get through it was to create,” he said. “The more I did, the less the panic attacks came on.”

He wants his art to be not only accessible to all but to help people.

“I’m deeply committed to help children in need,” he said.

He regularly donates prints of his work to children’s charitable organizations, including the Ronald McDonald House, Shriners Hospitals for Children and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Edwards is looking forward to his new life in Walpole, where he is working on what he calls a “conceptual construction” in his backyard with the help of Walpole stone wall builder, Doug Faxon. It’s a 10-foot-high, 12-foot-long sculpture he’ll photograph for a limited-edition print.

“It will show the contrast between the texture of hard stone and the soft lines of the human form,” he said.

His current two-dimensional series, titled “Ebb and Flow,” is made up of large-format abstract works he said are a “contrast between two moving facets.” He is looking for a venue to show his new work locally, much of it for the first time.

At the same time, he’ll be featured in a documentary about his life and career that will be aired on CBS. It’s a sort of follow-up to an earlier piece on CBS Sunday Morning that showcased the creation of his image, “Lineaire Joindre,” of two dancers for which all the proceeds went to the Ronald McDonald House in New York City.

His in-progress biography, which will be a coffee table book, will mark the third about his work — the first two are “Fairfax” and “The Art of Dance.”

His philanthropic nature has unfortunately led others to take advantage: Edwards made headlines in 2014 with a lawsuit he filed against Oprah Winfrey’s company, Harpo, Inc., for copyright infringement. The complaint centered around the unauthorized use of Edwards's “Leg Warmers” and “Ballet Slippers” images during a television program on Winfrey’s network that devoted some time to dancer Misty Copeland.

“All the money and power someone may have (doesn’t mean they can) prevail when they take advantage of someone else's life's work,” said Edwards.

Edwards continues to have many reasons to celebrate his life.

His wife leads her own handmade greeting card company — her creations are sold at Creative Encounters in Keene. He has three children who are also in successful careers in the arts.

He discovered wearing red sneakers makes him happy — he has 40 pairs and said it’s how collectors recognize him.

“The docs say to do what makes you happy because life is short,” he said. “For me it’s creating art. It gets me from one day to the next and inspires me to keep working until my last breath.”