American, 1898–1991

Photo above: “Grand Central Station”, New York, ca 1910, B. Abbott

In the words of Mitra Abbaspour, Associate Curator of Department of Photography of New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) “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.” (…)

“Arriving back in New York in 1929, Abbott was struck by the rapid transformation of the built landscape. 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 (…)

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.”