Berenice abbott photos

Berenice Abbott


Berenice Abbott was an American photographer best known for her portraits of between-the-wars 20th-century cultural figures, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and science interpretation in the 1940s to 1960s.

Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio, and brought up in Ohio by her divorced mother, née Lillian Alice Bunn (m. Charles E. Abbott in Chillicothe OH, 1886). She attended Ohio State University for two semesters but left in early 1918 when her professor was dismissed because he was a German teaching an English class. She moved to New York City, where she studied sculpture and painting. In 1921 she traveled to Paris and studied sculpture with Emile Bourdelle. While in Paris, she became an assistant to Man Ray, who wanted someone with no previous knowledge of photography. Abbott took revealing portraits of Ray's fellow artists.

Abbott was part of the straight photography movement, which stressed the importance of photographs being unmanipulated in both subject matter and developing processes. She also disliked the work of

Berenice Abbott

"Paris was where the 20th century was." Should the remark so often quoted and attributed to Gertrude Stein prove apocryphal, it would make no difference. At the turn of the century and again after World War I, it seemed that most of the artistic and literary ferment of the modern world was focused in that city. To Paris in the 1920s came Berenice Abbott, a young woman fresh from Ohio State University's School of Journalism and from New York's Greenwich Village. Yet, despite this experience, she was still looking for her career, for her real profession and life's work. Born in Ohio in 1898, she had spent unhappy early years as the child of divorced parents and, after attending Ohio State University, had left the Midwest (for good) in 1918 for New York city and the Village. Ostensibly she was seeking a career in journalism and had moved to New York intending to pursue that subject at Columbia University. In fact the move to New York only presaged another in 1921, this time to Paris to study sculpture. "You're finding yourself as you go along when you're young,"she h

1

Berenice Abbott

Nightview, New York

1932

Silver gelatin print

2

Berenice Abbott

Fifth Avenue Houses, Nos. 4, 6, 8

1936

Silver gelatin print, printed later

3

Berenice Abbott

Tri-Boro Barber School, 264 Bowery

1935

Silver gelatin print

4

Berenice Abbott

Oyster Houses, South Street and Pike Slip

1931-32

Silver gelatin print, printed later

5

Berenice Abbott

Blossom Restaurant, 103 Bowery, New York

1935

Silver gelatin print, printed later

6

Berenice Abbott

Happy’s Refreshment Stand with Two Men, Florida

1954

Silver gelatin print, printed later

7

Berenice Abbott

Under the El at the Battery, New York

1936

Silver gelatin print, printed later

8

Berenice Abbott

Gunsmith and Police Station, New York

1937

Silver gelatin print, mounted on card, printed later

9

Berenice Abbott

Automat, 977 Eighth Avenue, New York

1936

Silver gelatin print, printed later

10

Berenice Abbott

Ferris Wheel, Florida

1954

Silver gelatin print, printed later

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