Berenice ABBOTT
An American photographer, Berenice Abbott was a central figure in and important bridge between the photographic circles and cultural hubs of Paris and New York. She was born in Springfield, Ohio, and in 1918 moved to New York, where she studied sculpture independently, meeting and making vital connections with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, leaders of the American avant-garde. In 1921, Abbott moved to Paris and continued her study of sculpture there and, later, in Berlin, before returning to Paris and becoming an assistant at the Man Ray Studio, where she would master photography. Her first solo show was at the gallery Le Sacre du Printemps in Paris in 1926 and featured portraits of the Parisian avant-garde, a practice she continued throughout her years in Paris, as in James Joyce.
It was in 1925 at the Man Ray Studio that Abbott first saw photographs by Eugène Atget. After Atget’s death, in 1927, she collaborated with Julien Levy, of New York’s Julien Levy Gallery, to buy most of Atget’s negatives and prints, bringing them back to New York upon her return in 1929. Abbott’s initiative preserved the archive of this fin-de-siècle French photographer’s studio, which, given its influence on the avant-garde, has become an important chapter of Abbott’s legacy.
Arriving back in New York in 1929, Abbott was struck by the rapid transformation of the built landscape. “Old New York is fast disappearing,” Abbott observed. “At almost any point on Manhattan Island, the sweep of one's vision can take in the dramatic contrasts of the old and the new and the bold foreshadowing of the future. This dynamic quality should be caught and recorded immediately in a documentary interpretation of New York City. The city is in the making and unless this transition is crystalized now in permanent form, it will be forever lost.... The camera alone can catch the swift surfaces of the cities today and speaks a language intelligible to all.”1
On the eve of the Great Depression she began a series of documentary photographs of the city that, with the support of the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1939, debuted in 1939 as the traveling exhibition and publication Changing New York, (see Daily News Building, 220 East 42nd Street, Manhattan, Fifth Avenue, Nos. 4, 6, 8, Manhattan, and Cedar Street from William Street, Manhattan. For the rest of her life Abbott advocated for a documentary style of photography as exemplified in this project, while also continuing to promote the work of Atget.
Her work was included in many influential exhibitions of the era, including the Salon de l’escalier, 1928; Fotografie der Gegenwart, 1929; Film und Foto, 1929; and Photography: 1839–1937, 1938; as well as in a solo-exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in 1932. In 1970, The Museum of Modern Art hosted a career retrospective.
Publications
1949 - Greenwich Village: Yesterday and Today. New York: Harper
1968 - A Portrait of Maine. New York: Macmillan
1930 - Atget, photographe de Paris. Paris: Henri Jonquières; New York: E. Weyhe
1941 - A Guide to Better Photography. New York: Crown
1948 - The View Camera Made Simple. Chicago: Ziff-Davis
1956 - Twenty Photographs by Eugène Atget 1856–1927
1963 - A Vision of Paris: The Photographs of Eugène Atget, the Words of Marcel Proust. New York: Macmillan
1964 - The World of Atget. New York: Horizon
1964 - Magnet. Cleveland: World, 1964
1965 - Motion. London: Longman Young
1968 - A Portrait of Maine. NY: Macmillan
1969 - The Attractive Universe: Gravity and the Shape of Space. Cleveland: World
2008 - Berenice Abbott. Germany/New York: Steidl
2010 - Berenice Abbott". London: Thames & Hudson
2012 - Berenice Abbott: Documenting Science. Göttingen: Steidl
2014 - The Unknown Berenice Abbott. Göttingen: Steidl
2015 - Berenice Abbott: Paris Portraits. Göttingen, Germany: Steidl; New York: Commerce Graphics
Selected Solo Exhibitions
1932 - Photographs by Berenice Abbott at Julien Levy Gallery, New York, NY
1934 - New York Photographs by Berenice Abbott at Museum of the City of New York, New York
1935 - New York Photographs by Berenice Abbott at Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA
1935 - New York Photographs by Berenice Abbott at Jerome Stavola Gallery, Hartford, CT
1935 - New York Photographs by Berenice Abbott at Fine Arts Guild, Cambridge, MA
1936 - Changing New York, Washington Circuit, Federal Art Project, traveling exhibition
1937 – Changing New York at Museum of the City of New York City, NY
1937 - Changing New York at Teachers College Library, New York, NY
1938 - Solo exhibition at Hudson D. Walker Gallery, New York, NY
1938 - Changing New York at New York State Museum, Albany, NY
1939 - Changing New York at Federal Art Gallery, New York, NY
1939 - Solo exhibition at Architectural League, New York, NY
1939 - Changing New York at Lawrenceville School, Lawrence Township, NJ
1939 - Changing New York at Photo League Gallery, New York, NY
1939 - Changing New York at New York State Employment Service, New York, NY
1939 - Changing New York at Walton High School, New York, NY
1940 - Photographs of New York by Berenice Abbott at The Cooper Union Library, New York, NY
1970 – Berenice Abbott, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
1979 - Berenice Abbott: The Red River Photographs at Hudson D. Walker Gallery at the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, Massachusetts
1982 - Berenice Abbott: The 20s and the 30s, International Center of Photography, New York City
1987 - Beauty of Physics at New York Academy of Sciences, New York, NY
1989 - Berenice Abbott, Photographer: A Modern Vision, The New York Public Library, New York NY
1992 - Documenting New York: Photographs by Berenice Abbott, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas
1996 - Berenice Abbott: Portraits, New York Views, and Science Photographs from the Permanent Collection, International Center of Photography, New York, NY
1998–99 - Berenice Abbott's Changing New York, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.
1999 - Berenice Abbott: Vintage Photographs of New York from the 1930s, Lee Gallery, Winchester, MA
1999 – Berenice Abbott: Science Photographs, The New York Public Library, New York NY
2006 - Berenice Abbott: All About Abbott, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, NY
2012 - Making Science Visible: The Photography of Berenice Abbott, The Fralin Museum of Art, Virginia
2012 - Berenice Abbott (1898–1991), Photographs, Jeu de Paume, Paris, France
2012 - Berenice Abbott: Photography and Science: An Essential Unity, MIT Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts
2015 - Berenice Abbott, Beetles & Huxley Gallery, London, England
2016 - Berenice Abbott – Photographs, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany
2023 - Berenice Abbott's New York Album, 1929. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Collections
New York Public Library
Museum of the City of New York
The Jewish Museum of New Yor
New York State Museum, Albany, NY
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC
Minneapolis Institute of Art
Pérez Art Museum Miami, FL
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN
Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis
Cleveland Museum of Art
New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM
Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN
International Photography Hall of Fame, St. Louis, MO
Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Ohio State University libraries
National Portrait Gallery, London, UK
Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, Canada
Museum of Modern Art, New York: 79 prints (as of 28 August 2023)
