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"What was it like?"

"People were living on borrowed time … an imaginary time … everyone knew the war wasn’t really over. They lived from day to day."

"Were you there when Lindbergh arrived?"

"Yes, I was there. It was a huge crowd. When we saw the plane no one breathed for a long time. Then the earth shook with the applause."

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The stories Berenice Abbott told me differ in detail, and sometimes in spirit, from what I have read elsewhere. It is as interesting to know how people remember events as it is to know what actually happened. I record the stories as she told them to me without reference to any other accounts. I did not have a tape recorder. I wrote notes immediately after the conversations.

Like many other aspiring artists and writers, Berenice Abbott went to Paris in 1921. I could not understand exactly how she met the surrealist artist and photographer Man Ray, but the meeting changed her life … and possibly his. As Berenice Abbott remembered it in 1990, Man Ray was doing portrait photography to make money, not because he loved it. He found the finishing work especially tedious and needed an assistant. Berenice had no experience, but asked him, "How about me?" He agreed to try her out.

Even after seventy-odd years, Berenice Abbott’s eyes sparkled as she recounted the discovery of her own innate talents. "I took to photography immediately. The first prints I made were good." Berenice learned everything she could from Man Ray. Eventually he suggested that she might try to do a portrait herself. She did, and again "the first one was good." When I asked what she meant by that, she replied, "Well, it was easy. Everything was all set up in the studio." Later in the hours-long conversation she seemed to contradict this remark. She told me that it took her a day with her subjects to do a portrait. She had to get inside them and it turned her upside-down inside. At the end of the day she would collapse exhausted.

Berenice Abbott, American (1898-1991), 1920. PORTRAIT OF JAMES JOYCE. Gelatin silver print. Museum Purchase: Lila Acheson Wallace Fund

Berenice told me that her collaboration with Man Ray ended when they had a joint exhibit. The critics flattered Abbott and panned Man Ray. "For ten days I was afraid to go to the studio," she told me. This story may not be true to the historical record, which shows that she did not open her own studio until 1926 and that many people who came to have their portraits done by Man Ray also had a portrait done by Abbott. They were so different in style: Man Ray rather coldly stylized, Berenice Abbott more informal. Her portraits reveal; his hide. Although the story she told in her 90s may not be historically accurate, it reveals a memory of discomfort with professional jealousies, an aching hazard for all creative people.

One of her most famous portraits is of James Joyce. To me he always seemed delicate and vulnerable in the portrait. Berenice Abbott said he was "feminine, very feminine." She told me that it was difficult to photograph him because his eyes were so sensitive to light. He wore his hat to shade his eyes. The lighting in the photograph is flat because Abbott used no lights. Oddly enough, the flat lighting contributes to the feeling that Joyce was sensitive and delicate.

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