1. Berenice Alice Abbott 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 attended The Ohio State University for two semesters, but left in early 1918 when her professor was dismissed because he was a German teaching an English class.
Berenice Abbott moved to New York City, where she studied sculpture and painting.
Berenice Abbott spent two years studying sculpture in Paris and Berlin.
Berenice Abbott studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris and the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin.
Berenice Abbott first became involved with photography in 1923, when Man Ray hired her as a darkroom assistant at his portrait studio in Montparnasse.
Berenice Abbott's subjects were people in the artistic and literary worlds, including French nationals, expatriates, and others just passing through the city.
Berenice Abbott's work was exhibited with that of Man Ray, Andre Kertesz, and others in Paris, in the "Salon de l'Escalier", and on the staircase of the Theatre des Champs-Elysees.
Berenice Abbott became interested in Atget's work, and managed to persuade him to sit for a portrait in 1927.
Berenice Abbott acquired the prints and negatives remaining in Eugene Atget's studio at his death in 1927.
In early 1929, Berenice Abbott visited New York City, ostensibly with the goal of finding an American publisher for Atget's photographs.
Berenice Abbott had her first exhibition in New York in 1937 entitled "Changing New York" at the Museum of the City of New York.
Berenice Abbott worked on her New York project independently for six years, unable to get financial support from organizations, foundations, or individuals.
Berenice Abbott supported herself with commercial work and with teaching gigs at the New School of Social Research beginning in 1933.
In 1935, Berenice Abbott was hired by the Federal Art Project as a project supervisor for her "Changing New York" project.
Berenice Abbott's project was primarily a sociological study embedded within modernist aesthetic practices.
Berenice Abbott sought to create a broadly inclusive collection of photographs that together suggest a vital interaction between three aspects of urban life: the diverse people of the city; the places they live, work and play; and their daily activities.
In 1935, Berenice Abbott moved into a Greenwich Village loft with art critic Elizabeth McCausland, with whom she lived until McCausland's death in 1965.
McCausland was an ardent supporter of Berenice Abbott, writing several articles for the Springfield Daily Republican, as well as for Trend and New Masses.
Berenice Abbott was told she should move from New York City due to air pollution.
Berenice Abbott purchased a rundown home in Blanchard, Maine along the banks of the Piscataquis River for US$1,000.
In 1943, Abbott was commissioned by Hudson D Walker to photograph operations at the Red River Lumber Company in Westwood, California.
Berenice Abbott was part of the straight photography movement, which stressed the importance of photographs being unmanipulated in both subject matter and developing processes.
Berenice Abbott disliked the work of pictorialists who had become popular during a substantial span of her career, leaving her work without support from this school of photographers.
Berenice Abbott's works documented and extolled the New York landscape.
Berenice Abbott's inventions included a distortion enlarging easel, which created unusual effects on images, and the telescopic lighting pole, known today by many studio photographers as an "autopole", to which lights can be attached at any level.
Berenice Abbott's work included images of wave patterns in water and stroboscopic images of moving objects, such as Bouncing ball in diminishing arcs, which was featured on the cover of the textbook.
Berenice Abbott contributed to the understanding of physical laws and properties of solids and liquids though her studies of light and motion.
The film Berenice Abbott: A View of the 20th Century, which showed 200 of her black and white photographs, suggests that she was a "proud proto-feminist"; someone who was ahead of her time in feminist theory.
Berenice Abbott lived with her partner, art critic Elizabeth McCausland, for 30 years.