1898 – Born Bernice
Abbott in Springfield, Ohio. Unhappy childhood living with 5 siblings and
divorced mother.
1917 – Studies briefly journalism at Ohio State
University.
1918 – Leaves for New York City, settles in
Bohemian world of Greenwich Village.
Acts in Eugene O’Neil plays, frequents anarchist Hippolyte Havel.
1919 – Nearly dies of Spanish flu. Begins
studying sculpture.
1920 – Friendly with New York Dadaists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray with whom she learns “how to dance”.
1921 – Embarks for Paris in the spring. Continues sculpting and also studies in
Berlin.
1923 – Hired by Man Ray to work as his dark room assistant in his photographic
studio in Montparnasse. First experience with photography, she will never look
back: “I took to photography like a duck to water. I
never wanted to do anything else. Excitement about the subject is the voltage
which pushes me over the mountain of drudgery necessary to produce the final
photograph.” Along with developing Man Ray’s photographs she
begins taking her own.
1926 – Rather
than raising her salary Man Ray gives her working space in which she now shoots
her own portraits of Paris
luminaries: Janet Flanner, Djuna Barnes, Peggy Guggenheim, Jean Cocteau, James
Joyce, André Gide. First solo show at the gallery Sacre du Printemps. She is
noticed by French critics. Meets the old French photographer of Paris Eugène Atget (1857-1927). Buys a few of
his prints.
1927
– Death of Eugène Atget.
1928 – After 2 months of negotiation with
Atget’s testamentary executor, André Calmettes, she buys several thousands of
the master’s prints and negatives. Exhibits in first independent Photography
salon, the Salon de l’Escalier at the
Comédie des Champs- Elysées along with Man Ray, André Kertèsz, Gemaine Krull.
This is the first important rebellion against the “Pictorialist” tradition of
art photography represented by figures like Edward Steichen. Abbott lends some
her Atget prints to the show.
1929 – Returns
to New York in January hoping to pursue
her portrait career and publish a book on Atget. The Wall Street crash forces
her to close her New York studio. Inspired by Atget’s photos of Paris she
begins photographing New York, which during her absence had become the world’s
“skyscraper” city.
1930
– Exhibits her work and Atget’s at the Weyhe gallery. Publication in New York
and Paris of the book “Atget, “Photographer of Paris” with a preface by Pierre
Marc Orlan. Faced with increasing financial difficulties she signs a contract
with gallery owner Julien Lévy for
sharing the exploitation of her Atget prints and negatives. Shows in
“Photography” an exhibition organized in Harvard by Lincoln Kirstein, the first
American exhibition to show the “new” photography, including the young American
documentary photographers Walker Evans and Ralph Steiner.
1931 – Approaches various institutions to find
financing for her project of photographing New York: The Guggenheim Foundation,
Museum of the City of New York, New York Historical Society. Her efforts fail.
1932 – Participates in 4 exhibitions organized
or curated by Julien Lévy who specializes in modern photography and Surrealism,
including “Murals by American painters and photographers” at the new Museum of
Modern Art.
1933 – Teaches photography at the New School for
Social Research in Greenwich Village (until 1938).
1934-35 – Road trip with architectural historian
Henry Russel Hitchcock to photograph American Victorian architecture and the
buildings of Henry Hobson in New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Her photos will
be shown at Yale and MoMA. Exhibition in 1934 of her New York photos at the Museum of the City of New York. Meets
art critic Elizabeth
McCausland (“Butchy”) who will become her partner until her death in 1965. Her photo project “Changing New York”
finally receives support ($ 145 a month and a 1930 Ford roadster in 1936) from
the Federal Art Project. Abbott will
produce 300 8x10 negatives of great precision between 1935 and 1939 working in
collaboration with assistants and researchers who document her urban views.
1937 – A selection of the “Changing new York”
photos are shown at the Museum of the City of New York.
1939 – Publication of “Changing New York” in
time for the 1939 New York World’s Fair as an illustrated guidebook for
visitors much against the will of Abbott and McCausland.
1941 – Publication of her “Guide to Better
Photography”.
1944-45 – Artistic director of Science illustrated where she publishes photos illustrating scientific concepts,
inventing a new process of direct photography baptized “super-sight”.
1954 – Travels along route 1 from Maine to
Florida photographing provincial America.
1958-61 – Hired by MIT for an educational
project aimed at improving scientific teaching in American high schools.
Produces a series of beautiful yet simple photos on speed and magnetism widely
used in school textbooks.
1960 – Exhibition of her scientific
photos “Image of Physics” organized by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.
1964 – Publication of 3 books: “The World of
Atget”, “Magnet”, “Motion”.
1965 – Death of her companion Elizabeth McCausland.
1968 -
MoMa buys the entire Atget
archive from Abbott and Lévy for $80,000, the highest price ever paid for a
photographic collection. Abbott moves permanently to Maine.
1991 – Dies in Monson, Maine.
