`I photograph dancers'

For 25 years, photographer Jack Mitchell has captured charisma on camera. As photographer on assignment for Dance Magazine and the Sunday Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times, Mitchell has compiled a stunning catalog of stage personalities as well as revealing something of the human being behind the stage persona. Mitchell says, ``The key to my work is that I like the people I'm photographing. That's the reason I don't photograph trees or objects. I'm really interested in living human beings.'' But he adds, ``I never tell them that I liked their last performance. The moment you become a fan, they'll become a star, and I don't want them playing a role.''

More than 100 of Mitchell's best-known photographs have graced the covers of Dance Magazine. ``I never claim to photograph dance,'' he says, ``I photograph dancers.'' He is so aware of the possibilities of movement that he created his own ballet for still photography - a sequence of 30 images that he presented as a slide show with an accompanying original score.

An exhibition of photographs by Jack Mitchell, cosponsored by the Harvard Theatre Collection and the Harvard Summer Dance Center, will be held at Pusey and Widener Libraries at Harvard University, July 7 to Aug. 22, 1987. On Sept. 11 it will move to Edison Community College in Fort Myers, Fla.