Andre Gide

Andre Gide

Faces of the 20s [portfolio of 12 photographs]

Portfolio of 12 photographs published in an edition of 65, 1 through 60 and A through E, produced in 1982

Abbott, Berenice

photographer

1898 - 1991

American

1927 [repinted 1981]

Portfolio of 12 photographs published in an edition of 65, 1 through 60 and A through E, produced in 1982

gelatin silver print; black-and-white photograph

work

photographic gelatin; silver halide

photographic paper

gelatin silver process

50.8 x 40.64 cm (20 x 16 inches)

33.97 x 26.35 cm (13 1/2 x 10 3/8 inches)

50.8 x 40.64 cm (20 x 16 inches)

cloth-cover portfolio case 55.09 x 43.18 x 5.4 cm (21 11/16 x 17 x 2 1/8 inches)

2015.071.007

2015.071.007

2015.071.007_Gide.jpg

To request permission to publish or reproduce this work, please contact the Samuel Dorsky Museum.

Abbott has lit the French author and Nobel Prize winner (1947) Andre Gide (1869-1951) so as to highlight the writer's head, face and hands emerging from deep shadow. His look, directly out at the viewer, is equally penetrating and pensive and speaks of a deeply intellectual nature.

Berenice Abbott [in pencil]

lower right corner of mount verso

2 inscriptions: 56/60 [in pencil]; Berenice Abbott / Faces of the 20s / Published by Parasol Press, Ltd / 1981. All Rights Are Reserved [stamped]

1st inscription: lower left corner of mount verso; 2nd inscription: verso

American photographer, Berenice Abbott, was born in Springfield, Ohio on July 7, 1898 and died in retirement in Monson, Maine in 1991. She spent a formative and influential decade in Paris in the 1920s, during which time she served as darkroom assistant to American Surrealist photographer Man Ray (1923) and had a photographic portrait studio (1926-1929), photographing many of Paris' leading intellectuals and salonistes. After the 1929 world economic collapse, she returned to New York and spent most of her productive life in photography there. She undertook the systematic photographic documentation of New York City for the Federal Arts Project from 1935 to 1939 entitled "Changing New York." Her five decades of accomplishments behind the camera range from portraiture and modernist experimentation to documentation and scientific interpretation. Her contributions as photographic educator, inventor, author and historian are equally diverse: she originated the photography program at the New School for Social Research and taught there from 1934 to 1958; wrote several books and numerous articles including the once influential "Guide to Better Photography" (1941); received four U.S. patents for photographic and other devices; provided photographs for several science text books published by Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and rescued the work of French master photographer Eugene Atget. Abbott's photographs consistently reflect her innate appreciation for the profound documentary capacity of rigorously conceived images to impart information in an aesthetically engaging way. Within four major thematic categories -- Portraits (1920s-1930s), New York City (1930s-1940s), Science (1940s-1950s), and American Scenes (1930s-1960s) -- Abbott's photographs effectively unite the personal and the impersonal in one penetrating body of work.

people; portraits; documentary photography; authors--1920-1940

Copyright Julia Van Haaften http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/photo/abbottex/biography.html; http://www.getty.edu/vow/ULANFullDisplay?find=berenice+abbott&role=&nation=&prev_page=1&subjectid=500020631; Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography, p 135. New York, NY: The Museum of Modern Art, 1964

Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. State University of New York at New Paltz (New Paltz, New York, United States)

Photography Collection. Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art

http://hvvacc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/sdma/id/4896

56/60 [portfolio]

Modern (styles and periods)

Modern (styles and periods)

Gift of Marcuse Pfeifer

http://hvvacc.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/sdma/id/4896