Her photography career started in 1957, when Jerome Robbins invited her to photograph rehearsals for West Side Story.
[2] She photographed figures in the dance world including George Balanchine, Michael Bennett, Joe Papp, and David Merrick.
She donated her archive of 1.5 million images to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center in 2010.
[3] Swope's photographs were displayed in multiple books: Baryshnikov on Broadway: Photographs, Tanaquil Le Clercq's Mourka: The Autobiography of a Cat, Kenneth Laws's Physics and the Art of Dance, and Denny Martin Flinn's What They Did for Love: The Untold Story Behind the Making of A Chorus Line.
When she later moved to the Manhattan Plaza apartment complex on West 43rd Street, she adopted a greyhound mix named "Bert".