American photographer and artist.

Helen Balfour was born in Evanston, Illinois on August 1, 1900 or 1901 to Fannie Lindley and Alexander Balfour. In her later teenage years, Helen took a job in a photography studio to help support the family after the death of her mother. At this studio she learned to use the portrait camera and helped expand the studio’s business with creative ideas of her own. In the 1920s, Helen and her brother Malcolm (“Mac”) started their own commercial photography business in Evanston. She married Robert Bruce Morrison (March 5, 1902 – June 19, 1966), a publishing executive, in 1925 or 1926.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Morrison undertook several photography projects. She is known for her “Great Americans” or “Notable Americans” series, photographing some 200 people, among them Robert Frost, Helen Hayes, Nelson Algren, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein, Mies van der Rohe, Amelia Earhart, and Jane Addams. During the same time period, Morrison created a series of documentary and artistic photographs of African American communities in Kentucky.

In 1943 she became lighting director and artistic collaborator with modern dancer Sybil Shearer and by the mid-1950s was photographer Shearer exclusively. Her collaboration with Shearer produced a large collection of extraordinary dance photographs and films, as well as an intense and sensitive documentation of Shearer’s life. Their artistic and personal collaborations continued until Helen’s death on November 6, 1984.