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PUBLISHER
Fundación MAPFRE

BOOK FORMAT
Clth, 9.5 x 11.75 in. / 248 pgs / 190 duotone.

PUBLISHING STATUS
Pub Date
Active

DISTRIBUTION
D.A.P. Exclusive
Catalog: SPRING 2019 p. 15   

PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN 9788498447040 TRADE
List Price: $65.00 CAD $82.00 GBP £52.00

AVAILABILITY
In stock

TERRITORY
WORLD Except Spain and Germany

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

Barcelona, Spain
Fundación MAPFRE, 2/19–5/19

THE FALL 2024 ARTBOOK | D.A.P. CATALOG

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Preview our FALL 2024 catalog, featuring more than 500 new books on art, photography, design, architecture, film, music and visual culture.
  

FUNDACIóN MAPFRE

Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity

Text by Estrella de Diego, Gary Van Zante, Cara Hoffman.

Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity

A superbly printed, definitive volume on the beloved American modernist photographer

This handsome publication presents legendary American photographer Berenice Abbott’s work in three categories: her portraits, photographs of the city and scientific photographs. The opening section presents Abbott’s portraits of mold-breaking individuals who changed the world from the mid-1920s onward such as Djuna Barnes, the New Yorker's Janet Flanner, Jean Cocteau and James Joyce.

The second part offers a dazzling portrait of New York which takes into account Abbott’s relations with and her fascination for the work of Eugčne Atget by including an introductory group of his photographs, which she printed from his negatives.

The third and final section focuses on Abbott’s scientific photographs, which she started to produce in the late 1940s.

Berenice Abbott was undoubtedly one of the defining portraitists of New York. Shops, people, bridges, streets, interiors, famous buildings under construction seen from outside or from above (the same ones that are visible today from the highway that runs round Manhattan) together make up this portrait.

Berenice Abbott (1891–1991) was born in Springfield, Ohio. She began her photography career in 1923, as Man Ray's darkroom assistant. Her work is collected in some of the most prestigious museums around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art.


Featured image is reproduced from 'Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity.'

PRAISE AND REVIEWS

New York Times

John Leland

Berenice Abbott captured the egomania and wanton development of New York’s streetscapes almost a century ago.

New York Times

John Leland

Abbott's phoros take the grid out of the grid. Symmetries give way to random architectural jostling. Buildings seem to be lean­ing on or over one another, slicing off at odd angles. It's an un­stable cityscape because it's still growing, indifferent to the com­forts of the people below.

Pride Source

Presented by Fundación MAPFRE, the publication offers a journey through Abbott’s career in the form of almost 200 photographs.

1stdibs

Marisa Bartolucci

Abbott has never been heralded as one of the defining giants of 20th-century photography. [...] The new monograph Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity may well change that.

L'Oeil de la Photographie

This handsome publication presents legendary American photographer Berenice Abbott’s work in three categories: her portraits, photographs of the city and scientific photographs.

Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity

in stock  $65.00


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FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 3/15/2021

'Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity' is a Women's History Month Staff Pick

'Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity' is a Women's History Month Staff Pick

"Self Portrait—Distortion" (c. 1930) is reproduced from Fundacíon Mapfre's superb duotone-printed Berenice Abbott monograph, Portraits of Modernity. Collecting Abbott's portraits of the most exciting, provocative and often gender-bending intellectuals of her time, her fearless photographs of all corners of 1930s New York and her documentation of scientific phenomena, including experiments with plants, gears, lenses, pendula, magnets and more, this 264-page clothbound volume is the perfect overview. It's also a glimpse into the pioneering spirit of the early twentieth century avant-garde and its gender-defiant underground. continue to blog


FROM THE ARTBOOK BLOG

CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/3/2019

Interpretation and communication in 'Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity'

Interpretation and communication in 'Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity'

Cultured penicillin, radio tubes, a bouncing ball, mold growing on cheese, soap bubbles, a pendulum in motion and light passing through a prism are just a few of the "scientific" phenomena and objects that Berenice Abbott photographed from the 1930s through the 1960s. Many of these images capturing "the basic laws of physics" were included in the 1960 exhibition The Image of Physics in Manchester, New Hampshire, which is covered extensively in one section of Fondación Mapfre's gorgeous new overview. If photographic "interpretation is profound and true," Abbott said, "it strikes home. Then the picture is significant. It communicates to us." Featured image is "Lamps 1950s (RCA Research Laboratory, Camden, NJ)" (c. 1950s). continue to blog


BERENICE ABBOTT MONOGRAPHS + ARTIST'S BOOKS

You've Got to Do a Damn Sight Better than That, Buster

YOU'VE GOT TO DO A DAMN SIGHT BETTER THAN THAT, BUSTER

Steidl

ISBN: 9783958297012
USD $50.00
| CAD $69.95

Pub Date: 6/24/2025
Forthcoming


Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity

BERENICE ABBOTT: PORTRAITS OF MODERNITY

Fundación MAPFRE

ISBN: 9788498447040
USD $65.00
| CAD $82 UK £ 52

Pub Date: 4/23/2019
Active | In stock


Berenice Abbott: Paris Portraits 1925–1930

BERENICE ABBOTT: PARIS PORTRAITS 1925–1930

Steidl/Commerce Graphics, New York

ISBN: 9783869303147
USD $70.00
| CAD $92.5

Pub Date: 10/25/2016
Active | In stock


The Unknown Berenice Abbott

THE UNKNOWN BERENICE ABBOTT

Steidl

ISBN: 9783869306506
USD $525.00
| CAD $725

Pub Date: 10/15/2013
Active | In stock


Berenice Abbott: Documenting Science

BERENICE ABBOTT: DOCUMENTING SCIENCE

Steidl

ISBN: 9783869304311
USD $65.00
| CAD $87

Pub Date: 2/12/2012
Active | Out of stock