Photographer Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott once had no ambition other than to be a good darkroom assistant, but her artistic instinct and natural talent behind the camera propelled her well beyond that to become one of the most respected and pioneering photographers of the twentieth century.

Abbott is best known for her documentary series “Changing New York” (1936-1938), which captured the architecture and shifting social landscape of the city during the Great Depression as a part of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project.

Abbott also took famous portraits of author James Joyce and other writers and artists, and developed a new kind of scientific photography that made her technical images of bouncing balls to depict gravity and the geometry of soap bubbles also function as fine art.

“A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise