About the Photographer "Suppose we took a thousand negatives and
made a gigantic montage; a myriad-faceted picture combining the
elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad
faces, the triumphant faces, the power, the irony, the strength,
the decay, the past, the present, the future of a city – that
would be my favorite picture." -- Berenice Abbott in Popular
Photography, February 1940 Returning to the United States in
1929 after eight years in Europe, Berenice Abbott became
fascinated with New York City and resolved to create an all-
encompassing body of work documenting its many sides. After
struggling with funding, Abbott was finally granted an allowance
by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project. With
an abstracted, often graphic, grace, Abbott’s photographs
demonstrate the face of a city on the brink of revolutionary
change. Images of Modern skyscrapers are juxtaposed with the
makeshift shelters constructed by the homeless in Central Park;
for every beautiful example of