About the Exhibition
Berenice Abbott, Penn Station, 1935–38, printed 1982, gelatin silver print. The Clark, Gift of A&M Penn Photography Foundation by Arthur Stephen Penn and Paul Katz, 2007.2.33
One hundred years ago, Berenice Abbott took her first photograph. She was a young American in Paris working as an assistant to noted photographer Man Ray—little did Man Ray know, his assistant would soon come to be one of his greatest rivals, and ultimately, one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century. Born “Bernice” in Springfield, Ohio in 1898, Berenice was an intense and ambitious woman. She moved to Greenwich Village in 1918 and fell in with a crowd of artists and writers who urged her to nurture her creative spirit by relocating yet again in 1921—this time, to Paris.
In Man Ray’s Parisian studio, she quickly matched his fame as a photographer of the avant-garde. After she established her own independent photography business, Abbott once again felt the call of New York City, and returned to the US in 1929. She made capturing the evolving urban landscape her project, culminating in her most well known work: Changing New York, published in 1939. Less well-known, but no less remarkable, are her photos of the broader American Northeast.
In 2007, the Clark received a gift from the A&M Penn Photography Foundation by Arthur Stephen Penn and Paul Katz of over 400 Abbott photographs taken over almost all major phases of her career, excepting her scientific photography. The negatives were selected by Abbott from her vast archive and printed under her supervision in 1982.
Berenice Abbott's Modern Lens is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Grace Hanselman, curatorial assistant for works on paper. The exhibition is located in the Eugene V. Thaw Gallery for Works on Paper in the Manton Research Center.
This exhibition is made possible by Denise Littlefield Sobel.
