NAVIGATING THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: READING BERENICE ABBOTT’S CHANGING NEW YORK

Abstract

My thesis seeks to broaden the framework of conversation surrounding Berenice Abbott’s Changing New York. Much scholarship regarding Changing New York has focused on the individual photographs, examined and analyzed as independent of the meticulously arranged whole. My thesis considers the complete photo book, and how the curated pages work together to create a sort of guide of the city. Also, it has been continually noted that Abbott was a member of many artistic circles in New York City in the early 1930s, but little has been written analyzing how these relationships affected her artistic eye. Building on the scholarship of art historian Terri Weissman, my thesis contextualizes Abbott’s working environment to demonstrate how Abbott’s particular adherence to documentary photography allowed her to transcribe the urban metamorphosis. Turning to the scholarship of Peter Barr, I expand on his ideas regarding Abbott’s artistic relationship to the architectural and urban planning theories of Lewis Mumford and Henry-Russell Hitchcock. Abbott appropriated both Mumford and Hitchcock’s theories on the linear trajectory of architecture, selecting and composing her imagery to fashion for the viewer a decipherable sense of the built city. Within my thesis I sought to link contemporary ideas of the after-image proposed by Juan Ramon Resina to Abbott’s chronicling project. By using this framework I hope to show how Abbott’s photographs are still relevant to understanding the ever-changing New York City.