Video Highlights

Opening Lecture for Berenice Abbott's Modern Lens (49 Minutes)

Grace Hanselman, curatorial assistant for works on paper, introduces the work of Berenice Abbott, a pioneering documentary photographer known best for her portraits of the Parisian avant-garde and striking snapshots of twentieth-century New York. In the 1920s, American-born Abbott worked as an assistant to Man Ray in Paris before her career as a portraitist solidified in its own right. In a major artistic pivot, she returned to the United States in 1929 to undertake her most celebrated project: documenting New York City’s rapid urban transformation. Lesser-known but equally accomplished is her body of work photographing other cities and towns in the American Northeast. This exhibition showcases selections from a 2007 gift of over 400 Abbott photographs, some iconic and rarely if ever exhibited, highlighting her enduring impact on modern photography.