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To celebrate the centennial of Abbott's birth, the author has curated this show comprising the Museum of the City of New York's collection of 200 of the 307 prints that Abbott made between 1935 and 1939 in New York City with the support of the Works Progress Administration. Organized in eight geographical sections (e.g., Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, and Outer Boroughs), Abbott's views of New York contribute greatly to the documentation of the social, commercial, and architectural history of the city. Eugene Atget's approach to documenting cities with sparsely populated views of streets and shop fronts clearly shaped Abbott's own work in documenting New York City. Yochelson lays out such facts and analyses in an exceptionally well-written and carefully researched text that provides the most complete story to date of Abbott's life, artistic influences, and photographic contributions. The endnotes on each photograph are detailed and will be useful to photographers and city historians alike. Highly recommended for large academic and public libraries and for collections that specialize in the history of photography or New York City.?Kathleen Collins, Bank of America Archives, San Francisco Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. The New Yorker These canonical photographs have never before been so well presented. New York Times [Abbott's] images will fascinate anyone.... A cool record of a hot city. Los Angeles Times Manhattan never looked so sturdily poetic. Washington Post The definitive visual record of the city as it was during the Depression. Boston Globe Paramours of New York City will feel a heady mix of joy and jealousy at discovering that the city had yet another lover who saw and captured its dazzling, gritty grace. Kirkus Reviews In 1935 Abbott (18981991), already an experienced documentary photographer, set out with a bulky view camera to capture Manhattan's streets and building facades, to provide a thorough record of how the city looked at one point in time. Over the course of four years she covered the entire city, working neighborhood by neighborhood, and produced some 400 photographs, most of them unpublished until now. Yochelson, a consultant for the Museum of the City of New York, which holds the collection, has done a careful job of assembling and annotating the work. The 420 photographs crisply reproduced here are of extraordinary value to anyone wanting a detailed portrait of the city during the Depression. Abbott's photographs of tenements and skyscrapers, of street scenes and housefronts, of tiny backstreet shops and elegant department stores, of newstands, el stations, piers, factories, and office buildings are fascinating. Many are also powerful works of art, such as a shot of sunlight streaming through elevated tracks onto an otherwise shadowy street of shops, or her beautifuly composed depictions of neighborhood storefronts. An elegant, eminently browsable record of Manhattan's cityscapes, including many now entirely vanished. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Vanity Fair Abbott has given us the past, and in it we find our future. Newsweek Sixty years after they were taken, they still shimmer with fantastic passion. Booklist A vital addition for both American art and American history collections. Kirkus Reviews An elegant, eminently browsable record of Manhattan's cityscape. Book Description The highly acclaimed, definitive collection of Abbott's popular New York photographs. Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) was one of this century's greatest photographers, and her New York City images have come to define 1930's New York. The response to The New Press's landmark hardcover publication of Berenice Abbott: Changing New York was extraordinary. In addition to receiving rave reviews, it was chosen a best book of the year by the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and New York Newsday, and was featured in Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and the New York Daily News. A midwesterner who came to New York in 1918, Abbott moved to Paris in 1921 and worked as Man Ray's photographic assistant. Inspired by French photographer Atget, Abbott returned to America in 1929 to photograph New York City. With the financial support of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1939, she was able to realize her ambition to document a "changing New York," a project that remains the centerpiece of her career. Now available for the first time in an affordable paperback edition, Berenice Abbott features more than 300 duotones, arranged geographically in eight sections tracing the photographer's New York City odyssey. It also includes 113 variant images, line drawings, and period maps, as well as an explanatory text, which explores Abbott's compositional choices, her artistic and historical preoccupations, and the history of New York. Features: - 307 duotones--the complete WPA project--more than 200 published here for the first time - 113 halftones and line drawings, including period maps, technical drawings, and alternate prints - An introductory essay on the life and work of Berenice Abbott - Extended annotations distilled from the never-before-accessed WPA field notes Ingram Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) was one of the century's greatest photographers. Her New York City images, especially the Changing New York project of 1935-39, have come to define Depression-era New York. This definitive study of Abbott's Changing New York features all 307 duotones and 113 halftones presented together for the first time, plus first-time access to the related WPA field notes. About the author Bonnie Yochelson is a consulting curator at the Museum of the City of New York. The Museum of the City of New York is a nonprofit, private educational organization established in 1923 to collect, preserve, and present original cultural materials related to the history of New York City. |
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