Berenice Abbott is to American photography what Georgia O'Keeffe is to painting or Willa Cather to letters. Abbott's sixty-year career established her not only as a master of American photography but also as a teacher, writer, archivist, and inventor. A teenage rebel from Ohio, Abbott escaped to Paris --photographing, in Sylvia Beach's words, "everyone who was anyone"-- before returning to New York as the Roaring Twenties ended. She soon fell in love with art critic Elizabeth McCausland, with whom she would spend thirty years of her life. Abbott's best known work, "Changing New York," documented the city's 1930s metamorphosis. She next turned to science as a subject, culminating in work important to America's 1950s "space race" with the Soviet Union. This biography secures Abbott's place in the histories of photography and modern art while framing her accomplishments as a female artist and entrepreneur.
Big lie all my life : Ohio (1898-1918) -- Center of everything : Greenwich Village (1918-21) -- Blazing chisels : Paris and Berlin (1921-23) -- Why not me? : Paris (1923-26) -- Sexless bird catcher : Paris (1926-29) -- Shock of recognition : Atget, Balzac of the camera : Paris (1925-28) -- No scruples : New York (1929-30) -- Realizing New York : New York City (1930-32) -- Realizing America : New York and Eastern seaboard (1933-34) -- Fantastic passion : New York (1934-36) -- Creative documentary : New York (1936-37) -- Friendly interpreter : New York, California, Chicago (1939-51) -- Photography community : New York (1937-58) -- House of photography : New York (1946-59) -- Photo league : New York (1932-55) -- It has to walk alone : Aspen and New York (1951-54) -- Little old America : Florida and Maine (1954-58) -- PSSC : Cambridge and Maine (1958-60) -- Elizabeth : New York and Maine (1945-65) -- Sell Atget! : New York and Maine (1956-68) -- Hotcakes : New York and Maine (1962-75) -- Barrelhouse girl : New York and Maine (1975-83) -- Epilogue : Maine (1984-92).