Berenice Abbott in Five Photographs
Abbott was one of the most determined photographers of the early 20th century, and also rescued Eugène Atget from obscurity.
Photography is unlike almost any other artistic pursuit. The barriers to entry are remarkably minor, especially when compared to the original visual arts, painting and sculpture, but the consequence is that the artist’s uniqueness is so easily lost.
When we look back at the life and work of Berenice Abbott, this paradox really comes to the fore. Whilst many of the photographs she produced, especially those of New York in the 1930s, are interesting for us now, there is a question that hangs palpably in the air: is there something special about the photograph, or do we just like what it shows?
- Eugène Atget, Paris, 1927
Abbott began her career as Man Ray’s assistant in Paris in the 1920s. Whilst there she discovered Eugène Atget, and it is in large part thanks to Abbott’s enthusiasm for his photographs that his legacy was saved.
Abbott was, arguably, most successful at the dawn of her career. She became a very popular portrait photographer, even causing friction between herself and her employer because of her success. She even managed to convince the otherwise elusive and reluctant Atget to sit for her, the result being the photograph shown above.
There is a tragic side to this story, however. Atget never lived to see the finished photograph, as he died shortly after his picture was taken.
2. Blossom Restaurant, Bowery, New York, 1935
Abbott inevitably split from Man Ray and soon found herself lured back to New York, where she aimed to recreate the successes of Paris; but it was not to be. Her timing was terrible, returning to the States almost exactly as the Great Depression hit and luxuries like expensive portraits were more than most could afford.
However, armed with Atget’s collection and somewhat under his spell, the 1930s would prove to be productive years, if only photographically and not economically. Many of the photos she produced document the New York of that period in much the same way that Atget documented the Paris of the turn of the century.
3. Pike and Henry Streets, New York, 1936
This is such a classic, often copied shot that it has lost some of its magic, much like ‘The Mona Lisa’, which is never as impressive when you see it for yourself in the Louvre as you had hoped. That said, Abbott was one of the first, if not the first, to take this picture looking down the street to the Manhattan Bridge, here shrouded in the haze.
The worth of this photo is definitely in its content: the street in disrepair, the pedestrians wrapped in their winter coats, the sense of desolation that you can find on the side streets of even the busiest, most cosmopolitan cities.
The picture testifies to a photographer in full charge of her craft. The composition is excellent, the street leading our eye to the bridge; the exposure is handled extremely well, the shadows balanced by the highlights so that nothing is obscured — everything is revealed.
4. Night View, New York, 1932
There is something at once so remarkable about this photo, and yet so typical and commonplace that it throws a question mark over the very idea of photography as art.
It is remarkable because, considering the technology available to Berenice Abbott, it is a surprisingly well-executed shot. Abbott even went so far as to create a special developer to maximise the quality of what she thought would be an underexposed negative.
But what makes it so useful to those who would speak against photography is simply this: in which other art form can you say that modern versions of the same thing are massively superior? Anybody in today’s world could take the same photograph using the newest cameras on the market, and that photograph would be better.
How does this translate to the world of art? A reproduction of a Bosch or a Monet would be as good as the original, but it would be no more than a copy. There would not be anything about it that improved on the original. The same cannot be said of a photograph. Excepting those photographs that show a moment that is lost to us forever (and even then a cunning adventurer could prove me wrong by staging, for example, a man leaping over a puddle of water behind a train station, though this time shot on a Canon 5D MkIII), there is nothing about ‘Nightview’ to recommend it as a unique artistic creation.
5. Light Through Prism, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958-61
If the Great Depression ruined Abbott’s chances of a successful career, the Space Race revived them twenty years later.
When her project, ‘Changing New York’, failed, Abbott had to find something new to exercise her passion. She was a photographer who worked in projects, and her next choice was science, an area overlooked by most of her peers.
Success did not come quickly, but Abbott’s tenacity and fierce determination — she was many things in her life but never a quitter — ensured her eventual success. Hank O’Neal put it eloquently in his introduction to a book on Berenice Abbott:
“An argument can be made that Abbott’s scientific photographs are those that most set her apart from the other great American photographic artists. She not only created stunning images but also designed the experiments, equipment, and lighting used to create them.”
I am glad that I chose Berenice Abbott as a subject for this series. I had seen some of her photographs before, but I had never taken much interest in them. I love my book on Atget, but that’s because I dream of Paris in the early 1900s — I didn’t even know that without Abbott I wouldn’t have those images to illustrate my dreams.
My first exposure to Abbott’s own work was not positive. On the surface her photographs seem so ordinary; great photographs, perhaps, but certainly no greater than any modern-day amateur equivalents.
What became more interesting for me as I read about her life and her work is that, when you know something about each of her images, they become more interesting. When you know how much research she did before each of her photographs, before the shutter release was triggered, you come to understand why her images are held in such high regard.
And it led me to another thought. The photograph is only the termination of a long sequence of thoughts and executions; we see only the end, not the beginning and not the middle; when we ask ‘Is this art?’ we are asking a question of an incomplete thing. Could it be that photography is truly an art only when we consider all the work that led to each photograph’s creation?
