Berenice Abbott (1898–1991)

Lamport Export Company, 507-511 Broadway, Manhattan, 1935

Details

Berenice Abbott (1898–1991)
Lamport Export Company, 507-511 Broadway, Manhattan, 1935
gelatin silver contact print
stamped photographer's Federal Art Project 'Changing New York' credit stamp and titled, dated and numbered in pencil (verso)
image: 7 3/4 x 9 3/4 in. (19.7 x 24.9 cm.)
sheet: 8 x 10 in. (20.4 x 25.5 cm.)

Provenance

Robert Mann Gallery, New York;
acquired from the above by the present owner, 2002.

Literature

Bonnie Yochelson, Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, The New Press/The Museum of the City of New York, 1997, Greenwich Village no. 3, p. 150.
Ron Kurtz et al, Berenice Abbott, Vol. II, 'New York', Steidl, Göttingen, 2008, p. 61.

Exhibited

San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Picturing Modernity, September 2005–January 2006.
San Francisco, Pier 24, A Sense of Place, July 1, 2013–May 1, 2014.

Lot Essay

I took it through the fire escape purposely; it would have been easy to raise the camera but it seemed better through it. This part of lower Broadway is interesting simply because it is so commercial and nondescript. -- Berenice Abbott

Abbott's Changing New York project (1935-1939), funded by the Federal Art Project (a division of the Works Progress Administration) and sponsored by the Museum of the City of New York, documented Manhattan's changing cityscape and diverse citizens. This body of work remains an authoritative examination of Depression-era New York.

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