Berenice Abbott

(American, 1898-1991)

Water Pattern, from the Science Pictures Portfolio, n.d.

Fourth Avenue No. 154, Brooklyn, 1936

Suppose we took a thousand negatives and made a gigantic montage; a myriad-faceted picture combining the elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad faces, the triumphant faces, the power, the irony, the strength, the decay, the past, the present, the future of a city – that would be my favorite picture.

— Berenice Abbott in Popular Photography, February 1940

Returning to the United States in 1929 after eight years in Europe, Berenice Abbott became fascinated with New York City and resolved to create an all-encompassing body of work documenting its many sides. After struggling with funding, Abbott was finally granted an allowance by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. With an abstracted, often graphic, grace, Abbott’s photographs demonstrate the face of a city on the brink of revolutionary change. Images of Modern skyscrapers are juxtaposed with the makeshift shelters constructed by the homeless in Central Park; for every beautiful example of architecture, there is another of human destitution. Her works from this series, entitled Changing New York, (1935-1939) were exhibited at the Museum of the City in 1937.

Born in 1898 in Springfield, Ohio, Berenice Abbott traveled to Paris in 1918 with the intention of becoming a sculptor. Instead, she became Man Ray’s photographic assistant and by 1925 was a professional portrait photographer in her own right. Known for her systematic and richly detailed photographs of New York, Abbott also photographed scientific subjects for Life and for three secondary school physics textbooks. Abbott founded the photography program at The New School for Social Research (where she taught for over twenty years), was a prolific writer, and held four US patents for photographic and other devices. By purchasing Eugène Atget’s archive and essentially functioning as its curator until its sale to The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1968, Abbot can also be credited with preserving this important body of work. She died in 1991.

—Rachel Kapelke-Dale

Abbott, Berenice. Berenice Abbott, the 20’s and the 30’s: A Traveling Exhibition. Washington, D.C.: Published by the Smithsonian Institution Press for the National Museum of American Art, 1982.

Abbott, Berenice. Photographs.Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.

Abbott, Berenice and Eugène Atget. Berenice Abbott, Eugène Atget. Santa Fe, NM: Arena Editions, 2002.

Abbott, Berenice and Julia Van Haaften. Berenice Abbott. New York, NY: Aperture Foundation, 1988.

Abbott, Berenice and Julia Van Haaften. Berenice Abbott, Photographer: A Modern Vision: A Selection of Photographs and Essays. New York: New York Public Library, 1989.

Abbott, Berenice and Robert H. Allen. Berenice Abbott (videorecording).Cincinnati, Ohio: LBC; Schiff, 1988.

O’Neal, Hank and Berenice Abbott. Berenice Abbott, American Photographer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982.

O’Neal, Hank and Berenice Abbott. Berenice Abbott: Sixty Years of Photography. London: Thames & Hudson, 1982.

Tousley, Nancy and Berenice Abbott. The Berenice Abbott Portfolios. Calgary, Alta.: Glenbow Museum, 1982.

Weaver, Kay and Martha Wheelock. Berenice Abbott: A View of the 20th Century (videorecording). Sherman Oaks, Calif.: Ishtar Films, 1992.

Yochelson, Bonnie and Berenice Abbott. Berenice Abbott: Changing New York. New York: New Press: Museum of the City of New York: Distributed by W.W. Norton & Co., 1997.