Berenice Abbott
Encyclopedia
Berenice Abbott born Bernice Abbott, was an American
photographer best known for her black-and-white
photography of New York City
architecture
and urban design of the 1930s.
and brought up there by her divorced mother. She attended the Ohio State University
, but left in early 1918.
In 1918 she moved with friends from OSU to New York
's Greenwich Village
, where she was 'adopted' by the anarchist Hippolyte Havel
. She shared an apartment on Greenwich Avenue
with several others, including the writer Djuna Barnes
, philosopher Kenneth Burke
, and literary critic Malcolm Cowley
. At first she pursued journalism, but soon became interested in theater and sculpture, perhaps because of her interaction with artists Eugene O'Neill
, Man Ray
and Sadakichi Hartmann
. In 1919 she nearly died in the influenza
pandemic.
.
Abbott first became involved with photography in 1923, when Man Ray
, looking for somebody who knew nothing about photography and thus would do as he said, hired her as a darkroom assistant at his portrait studio in Montparnasse
. Later she would write: "I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else." Ray was impressed by her darkroom work and allowed her to use his studio to take her own photographs. In 1926, she had her first solo exhibition (in the gallery "Au Sacre du Printemps") and started her own studio on the rue du Bac. After a short time studying photography in Berlin, she returned to Paris in 1927 and started a second studio, on the rue Servandoni.
Abbott's subjects were people in the artistic and literary worlds, including French nationals (Jean Cocteau
), expatriates (James Joyce
), and others just passing through the city. According to Sylvia Beach
, "To be 'done' by Man Ray or Berenice Abbott meant you rated as somebody". Abbott's work was exhibited with that of Man Ray
, André Kertész
, and others in Paris, in the "Salon de l'Escalier" (more formally, the Premier Salon Indépendant de la Photographie), and on the staircase of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Her portraiture was unusual within exhibitions of modernist photography held in 1928–9 in Brussels and Germany.
In 1925, Man Ray introduced her to Eugène Atget's
photographs. She became a great admirer of Atget's work, and managed to persuade him to sit for a portrait in 1927. He died shortly thereafter. While the government acquired much of Atget's archive — Atget had sold 2,621 negatives in 1920, and his friend and executor André Calmettes sold 2,000 more immediately after his death — Abbott was able to buy the remainder in June 1928, and quickly started work on its promotion. An early tangible result was the 1930 book Atget, photographe de Paris, in which she is described as photo editor. Abbott's work on Atget's behalf would continue until her sale of the archive to the Museum of Modern Art in 1968. In addition to her book The World of Atget (1964), she provided the photographs for A Vision of Paris (1963), published a portfolio, Twenty Photographs, and wrote essays. Her sustained efforts helped Atget gain international recognition.
.
Abbott worked on her New York project independently for six years, unable to get financial support from organizations (such as the Museum of the City of New York
), foundations (such as the Guggenheim Foundation), or even individuals. She supported herself with commercial work and teaching at the New School of Social Research beginning in 1933. In 1935, however, Abbott was hired by the Federal Art Project
(FAP) as a project supervisor for her "Changing New York" project. She continued to take the photographs of the city, but she had assistants to help her both in the field and in the office. This arrangement allowed Abbott to devote all her time to producing, printing, and exhibiting her photographs. By the time she resigned from the FAP in 1939, she had produced 305 photographs that were then deposited at the Museum of the City of New York.
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).
Abbott's ideas about New York were highly influenced by Lewis Mumford
's historical writings from the early 1930s, which divided American history into a series of technological eras. Abbott, like Mumford, was particularly critical of America's "paleotechnic era," which, as he described it, emerged at end of the American Civil War
, a development called by other historians the Second Industrial Revolution
. Like Mumford, Abbott was hopeful that, through urban planning
efforts (aided by her photographs), Americans would be able to wrest control their cities from paleotechnic forces, and bring about what Mumford described as a more humane and human-scaled, "neotechnic era." Abbott’s agreement with Mumford can be seen especially in the ways that she photographed buildings that had been constructed in the paleotechnic era—before the advent of urban planning. Most often, buildings from this era appear in Abbott's photographs in compositions that made them look downright menacing.
In 1935 Abbott moved into a Greenwich Village loft with the art critic Elizabeth McCausland, with whom she lived until McCausland's death in 1965. McCausland was an ardent supporter of Abbott, writing several articles for the Springfield Daily Republican, as well as for Trend and New Masses (the latter under the pseudonym Elizabeth Noble). In addition, McCausland contributed the captions for the book of Abbott's photographs entitled Changing New York which was published in 1939.
text-book.
Not only was Abbott a photographer, but she also started the "House of Photography" in 1947 to promote and sell some of her inventions. These included a distortion easel, which created unusual effects on images developed in a darkroom, and the telescopic lighting pole, known today by many studio photographers as an "autopole," to which lights can be attached at any level. Owing to poor marketing, the House of Photography quickly lost money, and with the deaths of two designers, the company closed.
asked Abbott to photograph two subjects: antebellum architecture and the architecture of H. H. Richardson
.
Two decades later, Abbott and McCausland traveled US 1
from Florida to Maine, and Abbott photographed the small towns and growing automobile-related architecture. The project resulted in more than 2,500 negatives
. Shortly after, Abbott underwent a lung
operation. She was told she should move from New York City due to air pollution and she bought a rundown home in Blanchard, Maine
along the banks of the Piscataquis River
for US$1,000. Later she moved to nearby Monson, remaining in Maine until her death in 1991.
Abbott's work in Maine continued after that project and after her move to Maine and her last book was A Portrait of Maine (1968).
movement, which stressed the importance of photographs being unmanipulated in both subject matter and developing processes. She also disliked the work of pictorialists
such as Alfred Stieglitz
, who had gained much popularity during a substantial span of her own career, and therefore left her work without support from this particular school of photographers.
Throughout her career, Abbott's photography was very much a display of the rise in development in technology and society
. Her works documented and praised the New York landscape. This was all guided by her belief that a modern day invention such as the camera deserved to document the 20th century.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
photographer best known for her black-and-white
Black-and-white
Black-and-white, often abbreviated B/W or B&W, is a term referring to a number of monochrome forms in visual arts.Black-and-white as a description is also something of a misnomer, for in addition to black and white, most of these media included varying shades of gray...
photography of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
architecture
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
and urban design of the 1930s.
Youth
Abbott was born in Springfield, OhioSpringfield, Ohio
Springfield is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Clark County. The municipality is located in southwestern Ohio and is situated on the Mad River, Buck Creek and Beaver Creek, approximately west of Columbus and northeast of Dayton. Springfield is home to Wittenberg...
and brought up there by her divorced mother. She attended the Ohio State University
Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
, but left in early 1918.
In 1918 she moved with friends from OSU to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
's Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, where she was 'adopted' by the anarchist Hippolyte Havel
Hippolyte Havel
Hippolyte Havel was a Czech anarchist who lived in Greenwich Village, New York, which he declared to be "a spiritual zone of mind". He was close friends with Emma Goldman....
. She shared an apartment on Greenwich Avenue
Greenwich Avenue (Manhattan)
Greenwich Avenue is a southeast-northwest avenue in Greenwich Village, in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It extends from the intersection of 6th Avenue and 8th Street at its southeast end to its northwestern end at 8th Avenue between 14th Street and 13th Street...
with several others, including the writer Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...
, philosopher Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Burke
Kenneth Duva Burke was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.-Personal history:...
, and literary critic Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley
Malcolm Cowley was an American novelist, poet, literary critic, and journalist.-Early life:...
. At first she pursued journalism, but soon became interested in theater and sculpture, perhaps because of her interaction with artists Eugene O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
, Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
and Sadakichi Hartmann
Sadakichi Hartmann
Carl Sadakichi Hartmann was a critic and poet of German and Japanese descent.Hartmann, born on the artificial island of Dejima, Nagasaki and raised in Germany, became an American citizen in 1894. An important early participant in modernism, Hartmann was a friend of such diverse figures as Walt...
. In 1919 she nearly died in the influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
pandemic.
Europe: Photography and poetry
Abbott went to Europe in 1921, spending two years studying sculpture in Paris and Berlin. During this time, she adopted the French spelling of her first name, "Berenice," at the suggestion of Djuna Barnes. In addition to her work in the visual arts, Abbott published poetry in the experimental literary journal transitionTransition (literary journal)
transition was an experimental literary journal that featured surrealist, expressionist, and Dada art and artists. It was founded in 1927 by poet Eugene Jolas and his wife Maria McDonald and published in Paris...
.
Abbott first became involved with photography in 1923, when Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, looking for somebody who knew nothing about photography and thus would do as he said, hired her as a darkroom assistant at his portrait studio in Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
. Later she would write: "I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else." Ray was impressed by her darkroom work and allowed her to use his studio to take her own photographs. In 1926, she had her first solo exhibition (in the gallery "Au Sacre du Printemps") and started her own studio on the rue du Bac. After a short time studying photography in Berlin, she returned to Paris in 1927 and started a second studio, on the rue Servandoni.
Abbott's subjects were people in the artistic and literary worlds, including French nationals (Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
), expatriates (James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
), and others just passing through the city. According to Sylvia Beach
Sylvia Beach
Sylvia Beach , born Nancy Woodbridge Beach, was an American-born bookseller and publisher who lived most of her life in Paris, where she was one of the leading expatriate figures between World War I and II.-Early life:...
, "To be 'done' by Man Ray or Berenice Abbott meant you rated as somebody". Abbott's work was exhibited with that of Man Ray
Man Ray
Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...
, André Kertész
André Kertész
André Kertész , born Kertész Andor, was a Hungarian-born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition and the photo essay. In the early years of his career, his then-unorthodox camera angles and style prevented his work from gaining wider recognition...
, and others in Paris, in the "Salon de l'Escalier" (more formally, the Premier Salon Indépendant de la Photographie), and on the staircase of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Her portraiture was unusual within exhibitions of modernist photography held in 1928–9 in Brussels and Germany.
In 1925, Man Ray introduced her to Eugène Atget's
Eugène Atget
Eugène Atget was a French photographer noted for his photographs documenting the architecture and street scenes of Paris....
photographs. She became a great admirer of Atget's work, and managed to persuade him to sit for a portrait in 1927. He died shortly thereafter. While the government acquired much of Atget's archive — Atget had sold 2,621 negatives in 1920, and his friend and executor André Calmettes sold 2,000 more immediately after his death — Abbott was able to buy the remainder in June 1928, and quickly started work on its promotion. An early tangible result was the 1930 book Atget, photographe de Paris, in which she is described as photo editor. Abbott's work on Atget's behalf would continue until her sale of the archive to the Museum of Modern Art in 1968. In addition to her book The World of Atget (1964), she provided the photographs for A Vision of Paris (1963), published a portfolio, Twenty Photographs, and wrote essays. Her sustained efforts helped Atget gain international recognition.
Changing New York
In early 1929, Abbott visited New York City ostensibly to find an American publisher for Atget's photographs. Upon seeing the city again, however, Abbott immediately saw its photographic potential. Accordingly, she went back to Paris, closed up her studio, and returned to New York in September. Her first photographs of the city were taken with a hand-held Kurt-Bentzin camera, but soon she acquired a Century Universal camera which produced 8 x 10 inch negatives. Using this large format camera, Abbott photographed New York City with the diligence and attention to detail she had so admired in Eugène Atget. Her work has provided a historical chronicle of many now-destroyed buildings and neighborhoods of ManhattanManhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
.
Abbott worked on her New York project independently for six years, unable to get financial support from organizations (such as the Museum of the City of New York
Museum of the City of New York
The Museum of the City of New York is an art gallery and history museum founded in 1923 to present the history of New York City, USA and its people...
), foundations (such as the Guggenheim Foundation), or even individuals. She supported herself with commercial work and teaching at the New School of Social Research beginning in 1933. In 1935, however, Abbott was hired by the Federal Art Project
Federal Art Project
The Federal Art Project was the visual arts arm of the Great Depression-era New Deal Works Progress Administration Federal One program in the United States. It operated from August 29, 1935, until June 30, 1943. Reputed to have created more than 200,000 separate works, FAP artists created...
(FAP) as a project supervisor for her "Changing New York" project. She continued to take the photographs of the city, but she had assistants to help her both in the field and in the office. This arrangement allowed Abbott to devote all her time to producing, printing, and exhibiting her photographs. By the time she resigned from the FAP in 1939, she had produced 305 photographs that were then deposited at the Museum of the City of New York.
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).
Abbott's ideas about New York were highly influenced by Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...
's historical writings from the early 1930s, which divided American history into a series of technological eras. Abbott, like Mumford, was particularly critical of America's "paleotechnic era," which, as he described it, emerged at end of the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, a development called by other historians the Second Industrial Revolution
Second Industrial Revolution
The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of the larger Industrial Revolution corresponding to the latter half of the 19th century until World War I...
. Like Mumford, Abbott was hopeful that, through urban planning
Urban planning
Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....
efforts (aided by her photographs), Americans would be able to wrest control their cities from paleotechnic forces, and bring about what Mumford described as a more humane and human-scaled, "neotechnic era." Abbott’s agreement with Mumford can be seen especially in the ways that she photographed buildings that had been constructed in the paleotechnic era—before the advent of urban planning. Most often, buildings from this era appear in Abbott's photographs in compositions that made them look downright menacing.
In 1935 Abbott moved into a Greenwich Village loft with the art critic Elizabeth McCausland, with whom she lived until McCausland's death in 1965. McCausland was an ardent supporter of Abbott, writing several articles for the Springfield Daily Republican, as well as for Trend and New Masses (the latter under the pseudonym Elizabeth Noble). In addition, McCausland contributed the captions for the book of Abbott's photographs entitled Changing New York which was published in 1939.
Scientific work
Abbott's style of straight photography helped her make important contributions to scientific photography. In 1958, she produced a series of photographs for a high-school physicsPhysics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
text-book.
Not only was Abbott a photographer, but she also started the "House of Photography" in 1947 to promote and sell some of her inventions. These included a distortion easel, which created unusual effects on images developed in a darkroom, and the telescopic lighting pole, known today by many studio photographers as an "autopole," to which lights can be attached at any level. Owing to poor marketing, the House of Photography quickly lost money, and with the deaths of two designers, the company closed.
Beyond New York City
In 1934 Henry-Russell HitchcockHenry-Russell Hitchcock
Henry-Russell Hitchcock was the leading American architectural historian of his generation. A long-time professor at Smith College and New York University, he is best known for writings that helped to define Modern architecture.-Biography:...
asked Abbott to photograph two subjects: antebellum architecture and the architecture of H. H. Richardson
Henry Hobson Richardson
Henry Hobson Richardson was a prominent American architect who designed buildings in Albany, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and other cities. The style he popularized is named for him: Richardsonian Romanesque...
.
Two decades later, Abbott and McCausland traveled US 1
U.S. Route 1
U.S. Route 1 is a major north–south U.S. Highway that serves the East Coast of the United States. It runs 2,377 miles from Fort Kent, Maine at the Canadian border south to Key West, Florida. U.S. 1 generally parallels Interstate 95, though it is significantly farther west between...
from Florida to Maine, and Abbott photographed the small towns and growing automobile-related architecture. The project resulted in more than 2,500 negatives
Negative (photography)
In photography, a negative may refer to three different things, although they are all related.-A negative:Film for 35 mm cameras comes in long narrow strips of chemical-coated plastic or cellulose acetate. As each image is captured by the camera onto the film strip, the film strip advances so that...
. Shortly after, Abbott underwent a lung
Lung
The lung is the essential respiration organ in many air-breathing animals, including most tetrapods, a few fish and a few snails. In mammals and the more complex life forms, the two lungs are located near the backbone on either side of the heart...
operation. She was told she should move from New York City due to air pollution and she bought a rundown home in Blanchard, Maine
Blanchard, Maine
Blanchard is an unorganized territory in Piscataquis County, Maine, United States. The population was 83 at the 2000 census.-Geography:...
along the banks of the Piscataquis River
Piscataquis River
The Piscataquis River is a major tributary of the Penobscot River, found in Piscataquis County, Maine, United States. It starts from the confluence of its East Branch and West Branch in Blanchard. The river flows in a mostly eastern direction until it meets the Penobscot at Howland...
for US$1,000. Later she moved to nearby Monson, remaining in Maine until her death in 1991.
Abbott's work in Maine continued after that project and after her move to Maine and her last book was A Portrait of Maine (1968).
Approach to photography
Abbott was part of the straight photographyStraight photography
Pure photography or straight photography refers to photography that attempts to depict a scene as realistically and objectively as permitted by the medium, renouncing the use of manipulation....
movement, which stressed the importance of photographs being unmanipulated in both subject matter and developing processes. She also disliked the work of pictorialists
Pictorialism
Pictorialism is the name given to a photographic movement in vogue from around 1885 following the widespread introduction of the dry-plate process. It reached its height in the early years of the 20th century, and declined rapidly after 1914 after the widespread emergence of Modernism...
such as Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
, who had gained much popularity during a substantial span of her own career, and therefore left her work without support from this particular school of photographers.
Throughout her career, Abbott's photography was very much a display of the rise in development in technology and society
Technology and society
Technology and society or technology and culture refers to cyclical co-dependence, co-influence, co-production of technology and society upon the other . This synergistic relationship occurred from the dawn of humankind, with the invention of simple tools and continues into modern technologies such...
. Her works documented and praised the New York landscape. This was all guided by her belief that a modern day invention such as the camera deserved to document the 20th century.
Notable photographs
- Under the El at the Battery, New York, 1936.
- Nightview, New York, 1932.
- James Joyce, 1928.
Books of photographs by Berenice Abbott
- Changing New York. New York: Dutton, 1939. With text by Elizabeth McCausland.
- Reprint: New York in the Thirties, as Photographed by Berenice Abbott (New York: Dover, 1973).
- Greatly augmented, annotated edition: Bonnie Yochelson, ed., Berenice Abbott: Changing New York (New York: New Press and the Museum of the City of New York, 1997; ISBN 1-56584-377-0).
- Greenwich Village: Yesterday and Today. New York: Harper, 1949. With text by Henry Wysham Lanier.
- A Portrait of Maine. New York: Macmillan, 1968. With text by Chenoweth Hall.
Other books by, or with major contributions from, Berenice Abbott
- Atget, photographe de Paris. Paris: Henri Jonquières; New York: E. Weyhe, 1930. (As photograph editor.)
- The Attractive Universe: Gravity and the Shape of Space. Cleveland: World, 1969. With text by Evans G. Valens.
- A Guide to Better Photography. New York: Crown, 1941. Revised edition: New Guide to Better Photography (New York: Crown, 1953).
- Magnet. Cleveland: World, 1984. With text by Evans G. Valens.
- Motion. London: Longman Young, 1965. With text by Evans G. Valens.
- Twenty Photographs by Eugène Atget 1856–1927.
- The View Camera Made Simple. Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1948.
- A Vision of Paris: The Photographs of Eugène Atget, the Words of Marcel Proust. New York: Macmillan, 1963. Edited by Arthur D. Trottenberg.
- The World of Atget. New York: Horizon, 1964. (And later editions.)
- "Berenice Abbott." Germany/New York: Steidl, 2008. Berenice Abbott. Edited by Hank O'Neal and Ron Kurtz ISBN 3-86521-592-0
Anthologies of Abbott's works
- Berenice Abbott. Aperture Masters of Photography. New York: Aperture, 1988.
- Berenice Abbott, fotografie / Berenice Abbott: Photographs. Venice: Ikona, 1986.
- Berenice Abbott: Photographs. New York: Horizon, 1970.
- Berenice Abbott: Photographs. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.
- O'Neal, Hank. Berenice Abbott: American Photographer. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. British title: Berenice Abbott: Sixty Years of Photography. London: Thames & Hudson, 1982.
- Van Haaften, Julia, ed. Berenice Abbott, Photographer: A Modern Vision. New York: New York Public Library, 1989. ISBN 0-87104-420-X
Other sources
- Harris, David. Eugène Atget: Unknown Paris. New York: New Press, 2000. ISBN 1-56584-854-3
- Documentary Film: Berenice Abbott: A View of the Twentieth Century (1992)
- Peter Barr. "Becoming Documentary: Berenice Abbott's Photographs 1925-1939." Ph.D. dissertation (Boston University), 1997.
External links
- "Berenice Abbott: Changing New York" (New York Public Library)
- "Berenice Abbott photographs in the collections of the Museum of the City of New York"
- Berenice Abbott (International Photography Hall of Fame)
- Corinne, Tee A. "Berenice Abbott" (GLBTQ: An encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, transgender and queer culture.)
- Teicher, Jessica E. "Inspired by Berenice Abbott"
- "Berenice Abbott's Photographic Prints"(Commerce Graphics Ltd, Inc.)