July 17, 1898

Berenice Abbott (July 17, 1898 to December 9, 1991) ) is most famous for her photography of New York City, which culminated in a book Changing New York (1939).

Here is a sample of her work, from www.artblat.com:



We have these biographical notes:

Berenice Abbott was one of the tiny horde of Midwestern Yankee Americans who in the 1920's temporarily reversed the Course of Empire, and transferred the center of American cultural life to Paris. She arrived there in 1921 as a sculptor, and continued her studies with Emile Bourdelle. In 1923 she became an assistant in the photography studio of Man Ray, and two years later she first saw the photographs of Eugene Atget. She was irrevocably marked by the pure photographic authority of his work, and any remaining question as to her own life's work was settled.

In 1926 she opened her own portrait studio, and for the next three years photographed with honesty and grace the great and the famous of that city's intellectual world. In Paris the supply of artists, artistic celebrities, and salonistes seemed inexhaustible, and Abbott photographed many of them.

Her portrait of James Joyce is famous:



Elsewhere we learn:

Abbott became picture editor for Science Illustrated in the 1940s and continued in that role through the 1960s, expanding her subject matter to include scientific images. She moved to Maine in 1966 and continued as a science photographer, approaching the world around her methodically, as she had done with her portraits and images of New York. Abbott continued her photography until her death in 1991.

Here is a portrait of the artist, dated 1942, and taken by Barbara Morgan.