贝伦妮斯 阿博特
Berenice Abbott

　　贝伦妮斯·阿博特曾经为著名的摄影家曼·雷当摄影助手，从而深深地迷恋上了摄影。
　　使阿博特感受最深刻的却是70岁的尤金·阿杰特的摄影作品中那种表现力。阿博特似乎从中汲取了美学的营养，也看清了她努力的方向。阿杰特作品中的“毫无矫饰的现实主义”为阿博特提供了一个典范，同时阿杰特的摄影题材——旧时巴黎及其附近地方的全面的纪实——也许向阿博特提示了纪实作品的价值。1929年她回到纽约后就着手拍摄类似的照片，系
统、精确、详尽地拍摄迅速变化中的纽约市面貌。

　　American photographer Berenice Abbott was born in Springfield Ohio in 1898 and died in retirement in Monson, Maine in 1991. Except for a formative and influential decade in Paris in the 1920s, she spent most of her productive life in photography in New York City. 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 1934-58; 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; 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 (1940-1950s), and American Scenes (1930s-1960s) -- Abbott's photographs effectively unite the personal and the impersonal in one penetrating body of work. Her systematic documentary photography of New York City for the Federal Arts Project during 1935-1939, Changing New York is the subject pictured here.