archiwalia arch

PICTURE SHOWS: Newsstand, 32nd Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan ........ These fascinating photographs by a pioneering female photographer show New York in a state of change in the 1930s. Photographer Berenice Abbott proposed Changing New York, her grand project to document New York City, to the Federal Art Project (FAP) in 1935. The FAP was a Depression-era government program for unemployed artists and workers in related fields such as advertising, graphic design, illustration, photofinishing, and publishing. Rather than focus on the iconic sights, Abbott captured the sidestreets, stores, commuters and domestic areas of the huge city. Her goal was to photograph urban material, culture and the built environment of New York, documenting the old before it was torn down and recording new construction. Shooting 305 photos as part of the project between 1935 and 1939, Abbott's efforts resulted in a book in 1939, in advance of the World's Fair in Flushing Meadow NY. At the project's conclusion, the FAP distributed complete sets of Abbott's images to high schools, libraries and other public institutions in the metropolitan area. Scholar Peter Barr noted of Abbott's work: "She 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. It was intended to empower people by making them realise that their environment was a consequence of their collective behaviour (and vice versa). Moreover, she avoided the merely pretty in favour of what she described as "fantastic" contrasts between the old and the new, and chose her camera angles and lenses to create compositions that either stabilised a subject (if she approved of it), or destabilised it (if she scorned it)." The International Photography Hall of Fame says Berenice Abbott is "remembered as one of the most independent, determined and re