Berenice Alice Abbott (1898 – 1991) was an American photographer best known for her portraits of cultural figures of the interwar period, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and science interpretation of the 1940s to the 1960s.
Berenice Abbott was a central figure in and important bridge between the photographic circles and cultural hubs of Paris and New York. She moved to New York, where she studied sculpture independently, meeting and making vital connections with Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, leaders of the American avant-garde. In 1921, Abbott moved to Paris and continued her study of sculpture there and, later, in Berlin, before returning to Paris and becoming an assistant at the Man Ray Studio, where she would master photography. Her first solo show was at the gallery Le Sacre du Printemps in Paris in 1926 and featured portraits of the Parisian avant-garde, a practice she continued throughout her years in Paris, as in James Joyce.
It was in 1925 at the Man Ray Studio that Abbott first saw photographs by Eugène Atget. After Atget’s death, in 1927, she collaborated with Julien Levy, of New York’s Julien Levy Gallery, to buy most of Atget’s negatives and prints, bringing them back to New York upon her return in 1929. Abbott’s initiative preserved the archive of this fin-de-siècle French photographer’s studio, which, given its influence on the avant-garde, has become an important chapter of Abbott’s legacy.
Arriving back in New York in 1929, Abbott was struck by the rapid transformation of the built landscape. “Old New York is fast disappearing,” Abbott observed. “At almost any point on Manhattan Island, the sweep of one's vision can take in the dramatic contrasts of the old and the new and the bold foreshadowing of the future. This dynamic quality should be caught and recorded immediately in a documentary interpretation of New York City. The city is in the making and unless this transition is crystalized now in permanent form, it will be forever lost.... The camera alone can catch the swift surfaces of the cities today and speaks a language intelligible to all.”
On the eve of the Great Depression she began a series of documentary photographs of the city that, with the support of the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project from 1935 to 1939, debuted in 1939 as the traveling exhibition and publication Changing New York.
For the rest of her life Abbott advocated for a documentary style of photography as exemplified in this project, while also continuing to promote the work of Atget.
© 2026. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Berenice Abbott or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only
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| Ms. Berenice Abbott |
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| Grand Central Station, 1910 |
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| Pompe Funèbre, Paris, 1910 |
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| Djuna Barnes, 1925 |
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| Djuna Barnes, 1925 |
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| New York Stock Exchange, 1933 |
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| Changing New York, 1935 |
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| Norris Dam, Tennesse, 1935 |
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| Seventh Avenue, looking south from 35th Street, 1935 |
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| Poultry Shop, East 7th Street, New York, 1935-36 |
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| Automat in Manhattan, 1936 |
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| Canyon-Broadway & Exchange Place, 1936 |
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| Detail of Manhattan Bridge, 1936 |
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| Second and Third Avenue Lines, Bowery and Division Streets, Manhattan, 1936 |
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| Greyhound Bus Terminal, 1936 |
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| Hot dog stand, North Moore Street, Manhattan, 1936 |
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| Pennsylvania Station, New York, 1936 |
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| Pike and Henry Street, 1936 |
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| Radio Row at Cortlandt Street, 1936 |
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St. Bartholomew's Waldorf Astoria, General Electric Building,
Park Avenue and 51st St., 1936 |
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| Texaco Station, 1936 |
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| Gunsmith and Police Department, 6 Centre Market Place, Manhattan, 1937 |
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| Hell Gate Bridge, 1937 |
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| Triborough Bridge: Cables, 1937 |
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| Financial District rooftops, 1938 |
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| Flatiron Building, 1938 |
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| Old Post Office, Broadway and Park Row, Manhattan, 1938 |
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| The John Watts Statue in Trinity Churchyard, 1938 |
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| West Street, 1938 |
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| Edward Hopper, Greenwich Village, New York, 1947-49 |
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| Rollerskating Under Tent, Georgia, 1954 |
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| Interference of Waves, 1958-61 |
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| Light Through Prism, 1958-61 |
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| Parabolic Mirror, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958-61 |
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