Abbott, Berenice

Berenice Abbott was born in Ohio in 1898, and first established herself in commercial portraiture in Paris and later in New York. Besides creating masterful bodies of work of the changing face of New York, scientific phenomena, Route 1, and Maine, Abbott was an inventor of photographic equipment, a pioneer in the teaching of photographic techniques, and the first and most committed person to champion the work of the turn-of-the-century French photographer, Eugene Atget. Berenice Abbott died in Maine in December 1991.