Berenice Abbott's Work in the 1930s

Abstract

In a pioneering article on the “Documentary Approach to Photography” published in 1938, Beaumont Newhall cited two large-scale contemporary photodocumentations to exemplify what he saw as the commitment of “younger photographers” to “this materialistic approach [as] the basis for an esthetic of photography.” Both projects had been supported by the federal government since 1935, and both were massive in scope. One was the monumental survey of rural America conducted for the Farm Security Administration by a team of photographers directed by the economist Roy Emerson Stryker. The other was “Changing New York”—the “courageous and sweeping documentation of New York City” by a single artist, Berenice Abbott, aided by a small group of research and technical assistants provided by the Federal Art Project of the WPA.