Intro | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

Occasionally events did not unfold as planned. She was laughing when she told me the story of her photograph of the statue of Father Duffy in Times Square. She had arranged, she thought, to have the newly installed statue uncovered for the photograph. When she arrived, the workmen refused to remove the protective wraps. She photographed the enshrouded statue. By the time she finished, the police had arrived to encourage her departure. The photograph is perfect. The cross and Father Duffy’s name are clear. There are the Planters Peanuts, Coca Cola, and Hiram Walker signs in the background, hardly the perfect site for a man of the cloth. The statue remains a mystery. More than seventy years after the photograph was taken, you feel you have just walked down the street and come upon the statue. Like any good New Yorker, you stop and stare. Now, I, of course, laugh with the memory of Berenice.

Berenice’s curiosity about New York was never satisfied. Her self-appointed task … the task … of documenting the city will never be complete. When I think of my parents growing up in the city, it is Abbott’s images I see. I am sure I am not alone.

Even before she completed her New York project, Abbott began to think about her next subject. She told me that it was obvious … it had to be science. In 1939 she wrote an eloquent "manifesto" about the role of the photograph in science. Although many have tried, no one has succeeded in putting it more clearly, succinctly, and accurately than she did. She put on her glasses and read it to me:

"We live in a world made by science. But we—the millions of laymen—do not understand or appreciate the knowledge which thus controls our daily lives.

"To obtain wide popular support for science, to that end that we may explore this vast subject even further and bring as yet unexplored areas under control, there needs to be a friendly interpreter between science and the layman.

"I believe that photography can be this spokesman, as no other form of expression can be; for photography is the art of our time, the mechanical, scientific medium which matches the pace and character of our era, is attuned to the function. There is an essential unity between photography, science’s child, and science, the parent."

Of course, there was the usual problem of financing the project … and this proposal was an audacious one. Berenice described her many attempts to get even small funding. I asked her why she thought she was so firmly refused. She looked at me so intently that I felt her eyes were going to pierce right through me. With forceful disdain, she said, "They were stupid!"

Not one to be stopped by the ignorance of others, Berenice began to photograph science when she could. She told me that photographers "paint with light." On a visit to MIT she photographed one of the machines of twentieth-century physics, the Van de Graaff generator (this machine is now at the Boston Museum of Science). This early atom-smashing machine consists of two large metal spheres atop tall insulating towers. Inside the insulating column, a rolling belt carries charge to the sphere and thus produces an enormous voltage. The spectacular discharge of the machine produces huge sparks similar to lightning. In Berenice Abbott’s 1950 photograph, the lightning is artificial; she literally painted it by moving a small, bright light while the shutter was open. To the unpracticed eye this ruse is not obvious. Once she pointed it out to me I noticed the absence of the jagged signature of a real discharge. Berenice said that she initially thought the photograph was a failure, but a large print graced the wall of her living room. Late in her life when Josef Karsh photographed her, she stood in front of the generator photograph. She told me she was always fascinated by electricity and had wanted to illustrate a text about it. Perhaps the photograph of the generator painted with light represented that latent, never-realized dream.

Intro | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8