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Background information
"Berenice ABBOTT is one of the most important photographers of the 20th century. For six decades, she took photographs, portrayed artists and writers of the Parisian avant-garde, illustrated basic principles of natural science with her pictures and documented the metamorphosis of urban America with the camera. Three years after her first solo exhibition in Paris in 1926, she returned to New York, where a rapid urban transformation process was taking place: old quarters were disappearing and a breathtaking skyline was rising into the sky. Berenice ABBOTT made the changing metropolis a visual theme and placed ruins and demolition houses on an equal footing next to new skyscrapers, recorded advertising lettering as a signature of the modern city, as well as decay and poverty. In doing so, she uses the visual language of modernism: a simple but dynamic style with top and bottom views, cutouts, strong contrasts and dramatic edges.'Changing New York' she called this chronicle, which was written between 1935 and 1939 and which she published in a book in 1939.
Content
This catalog volume, 'Topographien', for the exhibition in the Martin-Gropius-Bau shows Berenice ABBOTT's famous iconic pictures from the 'Changing New York' series, early portraits and her pioneering work as a science photographer, thus giving an insight into the oeuvre of a great artist." (free translated publisher's note, © Steidl Verlag, 2016)
About the US-american photographer, Berenice ABBOTT (1898-1991)
Photo books on the work of Berenice ABBOTT