Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Berenice Abbott
1929-1930
Gelatin silver print

Old New York, new New York

While her debt to that French master photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927) is acknowledged through Abbott’s statement that she planned “to do for New York what Atget did for Paris,” Abbott’s photographs and her ‘point of view’ differ significantly to that of her Parisian hero.

Inflections of the influence of the Parisian master are present in the work, but in the project Changing New York Abbott develops a unique visual language through her representation of city life. Her photographs of shop fronts are more static and formal than that of Atget, more interested in the multiplicities of form than they are of reflections in glass, or ghostly people standing in doorways. Further, Atget would never have taken a photograph such as Gunsmith and Police Department, 6 Centre Market Place, Manhattan (1937) because the angle of the composition looking upwards is too severe, too modernist. Similarly, the placement by Abbott of the lamppost and U.S. Mail box in Old Law Tenements, 35-47 East 1st Street (1937) as the focus of attention, make this photograph uniquely her own.

Abbott photographs the co-mingled elements of old New York and new New York – the crowded tenements, rushing people, and “grand canyons” lined with monolithic skyscrapers of the bustling metropolis – as a city caught in the shadows of a piercing New York light. If you have been to New York you know that the city has that light, a hard, clinical light that bounces off surfaces until it sinks into the deepening shadows and recesses of overshadowed buildings. In her vital, still, intense, renditions of the cityscape Abbott’s photographs capture this light.

But what really changes her attitude (or altitude you might say) to the city is Abbott’s depiction of those edifices of modernism that are the crowning glory of New York: the skyscraper. Paraphrasing Karen Chambers from her article, “Paris to New York: Photographs by Eugène Atget and Berenice Abbott,” we can say that Abbott’s photographs of skyscrapers are different from the human scale of Atget’s photographs and of Abbott’s of a disappearing New York. Whether looking up from the bowls of the city (Canyon: Broadway and Exchange Place, 1936); across at the regimented forms of building (New York Telephone Company’s Lower Broadway Building, 1930-1931); or down from a God-like perspective (Waterfront, from roof of Irving Trust Company Building, 1938), Abbott’s photographs of skyscrapers and the spaces they inhabit perfectly capture the layered forms and walls of isolation of the contemporary working metropolis, complete with Tempo of the City automatons.

Through the meritocracy of her talent, Abbott’s vision soars and plunges, meticulously, into the utopian / dystopian fabric of the city, Atget influences subsumed into American light, form and culture… the brooding hulks of towering skyscrapers; the skeletal form of bridges; and Abbott’s clear persistence of vision – seeing modernity clearly, with focus, in focus.

Dr Marcus Bunyan 2020

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) is remembered for her magnificent photographs of New York City and its urban environs, photographs that show the influence of Atget in their attention to detail and understanding of the placement of the camera, and imaging of old and new parts of the city (much as Atget had photographed old Paris before it was destroyed). However, these photographs are uniquely her own, with their modernist New Vision aesthetic, bold perspectives and use of deep chiaroscuro to enhance form within the photograph. Abbott’s best known project, Changing New York (1935-1939) eventually consisted of 305 photographs that document the buildings of Manhattan, some of which are now destroyed. As the text on Wikipedia insightfully notes:

“Abbott’s project was primarily a sociological study imbedded within modernist aesthetic practices. She sought to create a broadly inclusive collection of photographs that together suggest a vital interaction between three aspects of urban life: the diverse people of the city; the places they live, work and play; and their daily activities. It was intended to empower people by making them realize that their environment was a consequence of their collective behavior (and vice versa). Moreover, she avoided the merely pretty in favor of what she described as “fantastic” contrasts between the old and the new, and chose her camera angles and lenses to create compositions that either stabilized a subject (if she approved of it), or destabilized it (if she scorned it).” 

Gaëlle Morel observes, “Rather than the kind of nostalgic approach often brought to bear on a city’s landmarks and typical sites, this ensemble offers an exploration of the nature of modernity and focuses on the ways in which the past and future are temporarily linked together. Seeking to reinvent the forms and functions of photography in relation to the practice of documentary, Abbott sets out to capture the “disappearance of the moment” by juxtaposing motifs from a city subject to an unprecedented process of demolition and reconstruction.”

While Abbott’s photographs are definitely modernist in nature I believe that today they can also be seen as deeply nostalgic, emerging as they do in the period after the Great Depression when the economy was on the move again, a peaceful time before the oncoming armageddon of the Second World War, closely followed by the fear of nuclear annihilation and the threat of communist indoctrination. They are timeless portraits of a de/reconstructed city. The images seem to float in the air, breathe in the shadows. This is the disappearance of the moment into the enigma of past, present, future – where the photograph becomes eternal, where the best work of both Atget and Abbott resides.

Dr Marcus Bunyan 2012

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Eugène Atget
1927
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
The El at Columbus and Broadway
1929
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
[Sumner Healy Antique Shop, 942 3rd Avenue near 57th Street, Manhattan]
1930s, printed 1936
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Night View, New York City
1932
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
New York Stock Exchange, New York City
1933
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Treasury Building, New York City
1933
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Henry Street from Market, Looking West, Manhattan
1935
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Newsstand, 32nd Street and 3rd Avenue, Manhattan
1935
Gelatin silver print 

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Blossom Restaurant, 103 Bowery, New York City, October 24, 1935
1935
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Miner, Greenview, West Virginia
1935
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Daily News Building, 220 East 42nd Street, Manhattan
November 21, 1935
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Canyon, Broadway and Exchange Place
1936
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Manhattan Bridge, Looking Up
1936
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
[Manhattan Bridge]
1936
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
[The El, 2nd and 3rd Avenue Lines, Bowery and Division Street, Manhattan]
1936
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Fifth Avenue Houses (5th Avenue and 8th Street)
1936, printed later
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Park Avenue and 39th Street, New York
1936
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
West Street
1936
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Greyhound Bus Terminal, 33rd and 34th Streets between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, Manhattan
1936
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Brooklyn Bridge, With Pier 21, Pennsylvania R.R.
1937
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Bread Store, 259 Bleecker Street
1937
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Cheese Store, 276 Bleecker Street, Manhattan
1937
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Gunsmith and Police Department Headquarters, 6 Centre Market Place and 240 Centre Street, New York City, February 4, 1937
1937 
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Triborough Bridge, East 125th Street Approach, New York City, June 29, 1937
1937
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Flat Iron Building, Broadway and Fifth Avenue, New York City
1938
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Broadway to the Battery, New York City, May 4, 1938
1938 
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland
Changing New York
New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1939

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Christopher Street Shop
late 1940s
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Sunoco Station, Trenton, New Jersey
1954
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Happy’s Refreshment Stand, Daytona Beach, Florida
1954
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Focusing Water Waves, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1958-1961
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Wave Pattern with Glass Plate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1958-1961
Gelatin silver print

Berenice Abbott exhibitions and photographs on Art Blart

~ Exhibition: ‘Berenice Abbott’s New York Album, 1929’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, March – September 2023
~ European photographic research tour exhibition: ‘Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity’ at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Part 2, September – December 2019
~ European photographic research tour exhibition: ‘Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity’ at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam Part 1, September – December 2019
~ Exhibition: ‘Berenice Abbott (1898-1991), Photographs’ at Jeu de Paume, Paris, February – April 2012