Berenice Abbot
Born Berenice Abbot, on 17 July, 1898 in Ohio – it was not until the early 1920s that she changed her name to Berenice. It was architectural photography that has made her famous – photographically documenting the changing race of New York.
She moved to New York, in 1918, following friends there sharing accommodation with them in Greenwich Village – she did odds jobs and featured in some plays. She decided to study journalism at the University of Columbia but soon became disillusioned she and changed to sculpture. It was in Greenwich Village that she initially met Man Ray, who she later worked for as a dark room assistant, after meeting up with him in Paris after she had joined the exodus from New York, as the increase in commercialism warred against the idealism of the time, Berenice Abbot quickly learned from this absolute master of abstract style. He allowed her to use his studio to produce her own photographs.
In 1926, Berenice Abbot held her first one-woman exhibit at a small Parisian gallery. It was not long before her collection rivaled his and she set up her own studio and established herself as a portraitist of artists and intellectuals. She produced portraits of another great photographer, Eugene Atget, but unfortunately discovered that he had died before she could show him her work. She purchased his 1400 glass plate negatives and 7 800 prints with the aid of a few of her friends and put together many exhibitions to promote and publish his photographs and officially became the greatest advocate in maintaining the memory of his works. She eventually sold the Atget Collection to the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1968.
In 1929, on a visit home Berenice Abbot noticed the changing architectural landscape of New York and decided to return home permanently to capture these changes. Many of her friends cautioned her not to leave the success she had achieved in Paris, however she was determined. Soon after her return, the stock market crashed. After struggling financially for some time, Fortune magazine hired her to take portraits of corporate executives.
It was during this period that she declared herself a documentary photographer. Berenice Abbot soon gained a reputation in New York and won support from a group of young Harvard alumni who patronized modern art. This support gave her a much needed break and she went on to exhibit her work at the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art in 1930 and then again in an exhibition 1932, at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo. Four of her prints were selected for the Museum of the City of New York's inaugural exhibition in January 1932. The New School for Social Research in Greenwich Village offered her a position to teach the first photography course. During this period she met architectural historian Henry Russell Hitchcock and collaborated with him for an exhibition. He was a modernist and this joint venture helped to sharpen her eye for early American architecture.
It was during this period that she met Elizabeth McCausland, an art critic for the Springfield Republican. It became the turning point in her life - they became companions and partners. McCausland was an idealistic liberal and social activist.
Due to the prevailing economics times in 1935, Berenice Abbot was forced to apply to New York’s Emergency Relief fund which soon thereafter became the Federal Art Project (FAP), to aid her in her quest to photograph New York City. It was during this period that she produced some of her finest works and was the only photographer to be assigned staff. She photographed various aspects of New York life, which included “Material Aspects” being buildings and squares; “Means of Life” being transportation, communications and service; and then “People and How They Live” this section never came to full fruition.
Abbott exhibited 111 photographs at the Museum of the City of New York in 1939, and soon thereafter 97 of her works were published by E. P. Dutton & Co. in a guidebook produced for visitors to the New York World’s Fair. Shortly thereafter, Abbott was laid off by the FAP in September 1939.
Berenice Abbott returned to photographically documenting New York City 1948, when she illustrated Greenwich Village Today and Yesterday (1949). In 1954 she was commissioned to photographed waterfront sites for a project called Metropolis: Old and New. Unfortunately these works were never published and only a handful of the photographs exist.
Abbott contributed to developing new techniques and equipment of photography and received several honorary doctorates. In her later career, she took to photographing science despite her lack of knowledge and founds ways to visualize scientific phenomena such as kinetic energy, electricity and gravity.
Berenice Abbott died in retirement in Monson, Maine in 1991. She had been living in rural Maine since 1965.
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