Dates: July 17, 1898 - December 9, 1991
Occupation: photographer and sculptor
About Berenice Abbott:
Berenice Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1898, and was raised by her mother, with little contact with her father and other siblings. She studied at Ohio State University and then became involved in the art scene of Greenwich Village, New York. She studied art in New York, Berlin, and Paris.
Moving to Europe in 1921 to pursue her art, she studied with Antoine Bourdelle, Man Ray, and Eugene Atget. She worked to bring Atget's work to public attention, in Paris and later in New York.
Berenice Abbott worked as an independent photographer in New York 1929-1968, including teaching from 1934-1968. As Atget had deliberately documented the changes in the city of Paris through photography, Abbott took pictures of New York and how it was changing in the 1930s. For a time, she was funded for this project by the Works Project Administration.
In the 1940s and 1950s Berenice Abbott began writing about the science of photography, as part of her concern for realism in her field. Berenice Abbott moved to Maine in 1968.
Berenice Abbott's companion was Elizabeth McCausland, art historian and critic.
Books:
- Changing New York (1939) (later published as New York in the Thirties (1973) and Berenice Abbott: Changing New York (1998).
- A Guide to Better Photography (1941, revised 1953)
- The View Camera Made Simple (1948)
- The World of Atget (1964)
- A Portrait of Maine (1968)
Berenice Abbott also wrote many articles for magazines, especially photography magazines.
Quotes:
- Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.
- [about going to Paris] I thought I may as well be poor there as here.
