Berenice Abbott

Born: July 17, 1898

Place: Springfield, OH

Died: December 9, 1991

Place: Monsoon, ME

BACKGROUND:

Berenice Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio to her divorced mother, Lillian Alice Bunn, who was the only one who raised her. Abbott had a standard primary and secondary education, along with attending university. She attended Ohio State University for two semesters before her professor was relieved of his job. Because of this, Abbott moved to New York City, where she studied painting and sculptures. Later, in 1921, Abbott went to Paris, France to shadow and learn about sculptures from Emile Bourdelle. While in France, Abbott also became an assistant to a well known photographer, Man Ray, who gave Abbott her first experiences with photography.

PHOTOGRAPHY CAREER:

Abbott was first hired by Man Ray as a dark room assistant, where she managed to impress Ray so much that he promoted her to work in his studio to take photos. Abbott mentioned that she "took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else". In 1921, Abbott's first major pieces made it into an exhibition in the Parisian gallery Le Sacre du Printemps. After many years of working in France and Berlin in various studios, Ray introduced Abbott to Eugene Atget, a photographer who documented all of France's old architecture before it got modernized. Abbott became interested in Atget's work, and in 1927, asked if he could sit down for a portrait. Howere, Atget shorty died after this, and much of his photos were archived by the French government, but Abbott acquired much of his prints and negatives. She then wrote a book called, The World of Atget, in which she included much of his photographs of Paris and published it as a portfolio. Abbott also had much of her photography career occur in New York City. in 1929, Abbott took her very first photos on a hand held camera, but then moved to using a Century Universal camera. She photographed many old neighborhoods and now-destroyed buildings to show the transformation of NYC, much like Atget did for Paris. In 1935, Abbott was hired by the Federal Art Project to take photos of the "Changing New York". By 1939, 305 of her photographs had found themselves a spot in the Museum of the City of New York. Most of Abbott's work was influenced by the writings of by Lewis Mumford, who described history through eras of technology. Abbott believed that through the aid of her photos, urban planning would be implemented in the creation of large cities, since most of the buildings she photographed occured before avid use of urban planning.