Homage to Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio in 1898. In 1918 she went to New York City, following some of her friends there. Her first intention in New York was to study journalism. She became dissappointed with her classes at Columbia University and supported herself with odd jobs.

In 1921 she moved to France. There she met fellow American Man Ray who was looking for a darkroom assistant who would follow his orders. Abbott soon became a photographer, learning from Man Ray. He offered her a studio to make her own portraits instead of pay. They soon had a competition between them as reputable photographers, although Abbott favored a natural spontaneous style, while Man Ray preferred posed styles.

In 1929 she moved back to New York, and saw that skyscrapers had overcome the Big Apple. Abbott switched from being a portrait photographer to an architecture photographer, because she was having trouble supporting herself. The stock market had just crashed and few people were willing to spend big bucks on a portrait photo. In 1934 she spent six weeks with Henry Russell Hitchcock, an architectural historian who was preparing an exhibit for the Museum of Modern Art and the University he taught at. Making photographs for Hitchcock helped Abbott "sharpen her eye for early American Architecture and practice the stylistic restraint required for a commission." Abbott became very interested in photographing the architecture of New York City.

She then spent many years trying to raise funds for a project she called "Changing New York." This project lasted 4 years, which she spent trying to take pictures of aspects of change throughout the city. This project got her a lot of publicity from the Museum of the City of New York. In 1939 a book was published with 97 of her photographs, and it became a classic photography book throughout the 20th century.