Francais | English | Espanõl

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Berenice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991), born Bernice Abbott, was an American photographer best known for her black-and-white photography of the architecture and urban design of New York City during the 1930s.

[edit] Youth

Contents 1 Youth 2 Europe: Photography and poetry 3 Changing New York 4 Scientific work 5 Beyond New York City 6 Approach to photography 7 Notable photographs 8 Notes 9 Sources and further reading 9.1 Books of photographs by Berenice Abbott 9.2 Other books by, or with major contributions by, Berenice Abbott 9.3 Anthologies of Abbott's works 9.4 Other sources 10 External links

Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio and was brought up there by her divorced mother. She attended Ohio State University, but left in early 1918.<ref>Birth, upbringing, OSU: Bonnie Yochelson, Berenice Abbott: Changing New York (New York: New Press, 1997), pp. 9–10; also available at "A Fantastic Passion for New York."</ref>

In 1918 she moved with friends from OSU to New York's Greenwich Village, where she was "adopted" by the anarchist Hippolyte Havel. She shared a large house on Greenwich Avenue with several others, including the writer Djuna Barnes, philosopher Kenneth Burke, and literary critic Malcolm Cowley.<ref>Yochelson, p. 10. Yochelson cites an unpublished 1975 interview with Abbott for the "adoption" remark.</ref> While studying sculpture she met such people as Man Ray and Sadakichi Hartmann.<ref>Sculpture, Ray, Hartmann: Julia Van Haaften, "Portraits", Berenice Abbott, Photographer: A Modern Vision (New York: New York Public Library, 1989), p. 11.</ref> In 1919 she nearly died in the Spanish Flu Pandemic.<ref>Spanish flu: Yochelson, p. 10.</ref>

Though Abbott never publicly discussed her own sexuality, the longest relationship of her life was with a woman (Elizabeth McCausland), and she has been described as a lesbian.<ref>Platt, Susan, Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, the Complete WPA Project. (Review), Art Journal, 22 June 1999.</ref><ref name="corinne">Tee A. Corinne, "Berenice Abbott", GLBTQ: An encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, transgender and queer culture.</ref> During her early life, Abbott was open within the artistic community with her sexuality^{[citation needed]}, but later in life she became more withdrawn and guarded.<ref name="corinne" />

[edit] Europe: Photography and poetry

Abbott went to Europe in 1921, spending two years studying sculpture in Paris and Berlin. Around this time she adopted the French spelling of her first name, "Berenice," at the suggestion of Djuna Barnes.<ref name="herring">{{cite book | last = Herring | first = Phillip | year = 1995 | title = Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes | location = New York | publisher = Penguin Books | id = ISBN 0-14-017842-2</ref>

In addition to her work in the visual arts, Abbott also published poetry in the experimental literary journal transition.<ref>Benstock, Shari (1986). Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900–1940. Texas: University of Texas Press. ISBN 0-292-79040-6.</ref>

Abbott's interest in photography took off around 1923, when Man Ray, looking for somebody who knew nothing about photography and thus would do as he said, hired her as a darkroom assistant at his portrait studio in Montparnasse. Later she would write: "I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else." Ray was impressed by her work and allowed her to use his studio.<ref>Arrangement with Ray: Yochelson, p. 10. Abbott quotation: Abbott, untitled text dated December 1975, Berenice Abbott, Photographer: A Modern Vision, p. 8.</ref> In 1926, she had her first solo exhibition (in the gallery "Au Sacre du Printemps") and started her own studio, on the rue du Bac. After a short time studying photography in Berlin, she returned to Paris in 1927 and started a second studio, on the rue Servandoni.<ref>Solo exhibition, studios: Van Haaften, "Portraits", Berenice Abbott, Photographer, p. 11.</ref>

Abbott concentrated on people in the artistic and literary worlds: French (Jean Cocteau), expatriates (James Joyce), and people just passing through the city. According to Sylvia Beach, "To be 'done' by Man Ray or Berenice Abbott meant you rated as somebody".<ref>Beach quotation: Van Haaften, "Portraits", Berenice Abbott, Photographer, p. 11.</ref> Abbott's work was exhibited with that of Ray, Kertész and others in Paris, in the "Salon de l'Escalier" — more formally, the Premier Salon Indépendant de la Photographie, on the staircase of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Her portraiture was unusual within exhibitions of modernist photography held in 1928–9 in Brussels and Germany.<ref>Salon de l'Escalier, Belgian and German exhibitions: Van Haaften, "Portraits", Berenice Abbott, Photographer, p. 11.</ref>

In the early 1920s she had a relationship with the artist Thelma Ellen Wood.<ref name="herring" />

In 1925, she was introduced to the photography of Eugène Atget by Man Ray. She became an even greater admirer of Atget's work than were Ray and his circle, and in 1927 managed to persuade him to sit for a portrait. He died shortly thereafter. While the government acquired much of Atget's archive — Atget had sold 2,621 negatives in 1920, and his friend and executor André Calmettes sold 2,000 more immediately after his death<ref>David Harris, Eugène Atget: Unknown Paris (New York: New Press, 2000), pp. 13, 15.</ref> — Abbott was able to buy the remainder in June 1928, and quickly started work on its promotion. An early tangible result was the 1930 book Atget, photographe de Paris, in which she is described as photo editor. Abbott's work on Atget's behalf would continue until her sale of the archive in 1968: in addition to her book The World of Atget (1964), she provided the photographs for A Vision of Paris (1963), published a portfolio, Twenty Photographs, and wrote essays.<ref>Harris, Eugène Atget, pp. 8, 188.</ref> Her sustained efforts would help Atget gain international recognition.

[edit] Changing New York

Main article: Changing New York

Abbott began documenting New York City in 1929.

In 1935 Abbott moved into a Greenwich Village loft with the art critic Elizabeth McCausland, with whom she lived until McCausland's death in 1965. They also collaborated on work supported by the Federal Art Project and published in book form in 1939 as Changing New York. Using a large format camera, Abbott photographed New York City with the same attention to detail and diligence that she learned from the career of Eugène Atget. Her work has provided a historical chronicle of many now-destroyed buildings and neighborhoods of Manhattan.

[edit] Scientific work

Abbott's style of straight photography helped her make important contributions to scientific photography. In 1958, she produced a series of photographs for a high-school physics text-book.

Not only was Abbott a photographer, but she also started the "House of Photography" in 1947 to promote and sell some of her inventions. These included a distortion easel, which created unusual effects on images developed in a darkroom, and the telescopic lighting pole, known today by many studio photographers as an "autopole," to which lights can be attached at any level. Owing to poor marketing, the House of Photography quickly lost money, and with the deaths of two designers, the company went under.

[edit] Beyond New York City

In 1934 Henry-Russell Hitchcock asked Abbott to photograph two subjects: antebellum architecture and the architecture of H. H. Richardson.

Two decades later, Abbott and McCausland traveled US 1 from Florida to Maine, and Abbott photographed the small towns and growing automobile-related architecture. The project resulted in over 2,500 negatives. Shortly thereafter, Abbott underwent a lung operation. She was told that for considerations of air pollution, it would be in her best interest to move away from New York City. She bought a rundown home in Maine for only US$1,000 and remained there until her death in 1991.

Abbott's work in Maine continued after that project and after her move to Maine; her last book was A Portrait of Maine (1968).

[edit] Approach to photography

Abbott was part of the straight photography movement, which stressed the importance of photographs being unmanipulated in both subject matter and developing processes. She was also against pictorialists such as Alfred Stieglitz, who had gained much popularity during a substantial span of her own career, and therefore left her work without support from this particular school of photographers.

Throughout her career, Abbott's photography was very much a display of the rise in development in technology and society. Her works documented and praised the New York landscape. This was all guided by her belief that a modern day invention such as the camera deserved to document the 20th century.<ref>Yochelson, Berenice Abbott.</ref>

[edit] Notable photographs

• Under the El at the Battery, New York, 1936.
• Nightview, New York, 1932.
• James Joyce, 1928.

[edit] Notes

<references />

[edit] Sources and further reading

[edit] Books of photographs by Berenice Abbott

• Changing New York. New York: Dutton, 1939. With text by Elizabeth McCausland.
  • Reprint: New York in the Thirties, as Photographed by Berenice Abbott (New York: Dover, 1973).
  • Greatly augmented, annotated edition: Bonnie Yochelson, ed., Berenice Abbott: Changing New York (New York: New Press and the Museum of the City of New York, 1997; ISBN 1-56584-377-0).
• Greenwich Village: Yesterday and Today. New York: Harper, 1949. With text by Henry Wysham Lanier.
• A Portrait of Maine. New York: Macmillan, 1968. With text by Chenoweth Hall.

[edit] Other books by, or with major contributions by, Berenice Abbott

• Atget, photographe de Paris. Paris: Henri Jonquières; New York: E. Weyhe, 1930. (As photograph editor.)
• The Attractive Universe: Gravity and the Shape of Space. Cleveland: World, 1969. With text by Evans G. Valens.
• A Guide to Better Photography. New York: Crown, 1941. Revised edition: New Guide to Better Photography (New York: Crown, 1953).
• Magnet. Cleveland: World, 1984. With text by Evans G. Valens.
• Motion. London: Longman Young, 1965. With text by Evans G. Valens.
• Twenty Photographs by Eugène Atget 1856–1927.
• The View Camera Made Simple. Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1948.
• A Vision of Paris: The Photographs of Eugène Atget, the Words of Marcel Proust. New York: Macmillan, 1963. Edited by Arthur D. Trottenberg.
• The World of Atget. New York: Horizon, 1964. (And later editions.)

[edit] Anthologies of Abbott's works

• Berenice Abbott. Aperture Masters of Photography. New York: Aperture, 1988.
• Berenice Abbott, fotografie / Berenice Abbott: Photographs. Venice: Ikona, 1986.
• Berenice Abbott: Photographs. New York: Horizon, 1970.
• Berenice Abbott: Photographs. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.
• O'Neal, Hank. Berenice Abbott: American Photographer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. British title: Berenice Abbott: Sixty Years of Photography. London: Thames & Hudson, 1982.
• Van Haaften, Julia, ed. Berenice Abbott, Photographer: A Modern Vision. New York: New York Public Library, 1989. ISBN 0-87104-420-X

[edit] Other sources

Harris, David. Eugène Atget: Unknown Paris. New York: New Press, 2000. ISBN 1-56584-854-3

[edit] External links

• "Berenice Abbott: Changing New York" (New York Public Library)
• Berenice Abbott's Changing New York (Museum of the City of New York)
• Online Exhibit of Portraits by Abbott (Laurence Miller Gallery)
• Corinne, Tee A. "Berenice Abbott" (GLBTQ: An encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, transgender and queer culture.)de:Berenice Abbott

fr:Berenice Abbott it:Berenice Abbott ja:ベレニス・アボット ru:Эббот, Беренис sv:Berenice Abbott zh:贝伦尼斯·阿博特