- Bernice Abbott was born on Springford, Ohio, in 1898.
- She had an exceptionally productive career and is best-known for her photographic portraits and documentary style photographs showing American life and society.
- She is also known as an inventor, an archivist(curator), historian, writer, and teacher.
- Bernice experimented with sculpture and painting after studying journalism and graduating from Ohio State University.
- Before opening her own studio in Paris, she worked with the surrealist photographer, Man Ray. She also photographed many popular literary and artistic characters in her studio.
- Bernice Abbott totally advocated "straight" photography (using no special effects). She contended that photography was documentary, because of the nature of its realistic images, and that its best expression was found in clearly focused images.
- In the 1930's she documented New York City in a way that was inspired by the French photographer Jean-Eugene-Auguste Atget. Her decision to document "the present jostling with the past" eventually resulted in the publication Changing New York (1939), that was funded by the Federal Art Project.
- In the 1940's and 1950's Bernice created a commissioned series of photographs to illustrate physics textbooks. They were really neat close-up images of things like soap bubbles, light beams, bouncing balls, wave patterns, and twirling wrenches.
- During that work, she also created new photographic techniques, and built and patented new cameras. What a go-getter!!!
Great post - nice work.
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