CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/3/2019

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).