Berenice Abbott: Paris Portraits 1925 - 1930

Description

This is one in a series of books to be published by Steidl that will explore Berenice Abbott's exceptional body of work. Abbott began her photographic career in 1925, taking portraits in Paris of some the most celebrated artists and writers of the day including Marie Laurencin, Jean Cocteau, Peggy Guggenheim and James Joyce. Within a year her work was exhibited and acclaimed. Paris Portraits 1925-30 features the clear, honest results of Abbott's earliest photographic project and illustrates the philosophy of all her subsequent work. For this landmark book, 115 portraits of 83 subjects have been scanned from the original glass negatives, the full negatives have been printed, and a die-cut overleaf presents each portrait incorporating Abbott's cropping instructions. Berenice Abbott, born in Springfield, Ohio in 1898, was a dominant figure in twentieth-century American photography. Abbott moved to Paris from New York in 1921, and in 1923, after many false starts, was hired by her friend Man Ray. He was looking for an assistant who knew nothing about photography whom he could teach. Abbott learned quickly and within a year was taking her own photographs. Her first solo exhibition in 1926 was a success, and for the next 65 years Abbott mastered a wide range of subjects. Highlights of Abbott's career include the monumental project Changing New York (1935-1938), photographing rural America including US Route 1 from Maine to Florida, photographically interpreting scientific and natural phenomena, establishing the reputation of Eugene Atget, and founding the first university photography program in the United States. Steidl published the two-volume retrospective Berenice Abbott (2008), and Documenting Science (2011).

a deeply intimate view into these quiet yet powerful photographs--Miss Rosen "Feature Shoot" a pristine collection examining the first phase of [Abbott's] career as a portrait photographer--Lew Whittington "New York Journal of Books" [The book] features 115 portraits of 83 subjects that have been scanned from the original glass negatives and printed in full, as well as the final crops as Abbott intended. The juxtaposing result, as O'Neal told In Sight, allows you to "see her process. You see what she is doing. You see an artist at work."--Karly Domb Sadof "The Washington Post" She lived with Djuna Barnes, photographed Man Ray, and taught Marcel Duchamp how to dance. Upon the release of a book showcasing her famous Paris Portraits, we discover the woman behind the camera.--Carey Dunne "Another Magazine" The subjects of Abbott's earliest photography project, now published in full for the first time as Paris Portraits 1925-1930, are never dull--particularly the women, who, in a dismissal of her male colleague's efforts, she aspired to capture as more than "pretty objects."--Prudence Peiffer "The New York Review of Books" There is a unity in Abbott's portraiture--finely presented in Steidl's indispensible Paris Portraits: 1925-1930...the ambiguity a product of the interaction between Abbott and her sitter. Her great achievement was to capture this fleeting milieu, on neither her nor her subjects' terms exclusively, but on the fertile middle ground.--Julian Cosma "Art News" ...it's the uncropped plates that turn Berenice Abbott - Paris Portraits 1925-1930 into the treasure it is, one of the finest photobooks I have come across this year.--Hank O'Neal "cphmag.com" Inventor, entrepreneur, and proud proto-feminist Berenice Abbott was many things in addition to a pioneering photographer, but Steidl's gorgeous Paris Portraits 1925-1930 focuses on this discrete body of work; it's reportedly the first in a series of Abbott titles, the rest of which can't come soon enough.--John DeFore "The Hollywood Reporter"