The Parisian Crowd

Berenice Abbott, Portrait of Tsugouharu Foujita, 1927, printed 1982, gelatin silver print. The Clark, gift of A&M Penn Photography Foundation by Arthur Stephen Penn and Paul Katz, 2007.2.397

Berenice Abbott quickly built herself a reputation as a top portrait photographer in Paris. She started out taking portraits of her friends, then friends of friends. In the span of about a year, she went from being an anonymous American expat to being a destination in her own right; famous personalities, especially members of the artistic and literary avant‐garde, began to seek Abbott out to have their portraits taken in her signature sharp style.

On the genre of portrait photography, Abbott wrote: "The maker of great portraits will have to have a burning curiosity which probes beneath the flesh to the bone and beyond that to the soul of the sitter. He may romanticize or dramatize a person, but in no petty spirit. The essence of the portrait is humanity, its meaning, all its thoughts, emotions, characteristics. How a person's life speaks through his eyes, the modelling of his cheekbones, the weight of his body as he sits or stands, are subtle nuances, without which portraiture is mechanical and lifeless."
—Berenice Abbott, A Guide to Better Photography