Berenice Abbott Self-Portrait
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Object Details
- Date
- c. 1932
- Artist
- Berenice Abbott, 17 Jul 1898 - 9 Dec 1991
- Sitter
- Berenice Abbott, 17 Jul 1898 - 9 Dec 1991
- Exhibition Label
- In 1923, having given up her ambitions of becoming a sculptor, Berenice Abbott was residing in Paris, wondering what to do next. Then, her friend Man Ray hired her as his darkroom assistant, and Abbott helped him develop his portraits of writers, artists, and other cultural figures. Man Ray taught Abbott about photography, but her own instinctive ideas about posing subjects soon emerged. By 1925, Abbott had begun to take photographs of friends and, soon after, began showing her work publicly. Her subjects included such notables as Jean Cocteau, Peggy Guggenheim, and Coco Chanel, as well as her close friends and lovers. Abbott recalled, “I relied on my intuition about people a great deal... I tried to get them unposed.” By the early 1930s, when she made this arresting self-portrait that reveals her “startling glacial turquoise” eyes, her photographic interests were shifting away from portraiture to chronicling the life and architecture of New York City.
- En 1923, después de abandonar su aspiración de ser escultora, Berenice Abbott estaba en París, preguntándose cuál sería su próximo paso. Entonces su amigo Man Ray la contrató como asistente en su cuarto oscuro para que lo ayudara a revelar sus retratos de escritores, artistas y otras figuras del ámbito cultural. Man Ray instruyó a Abbott en la fotografía, pero ella pronto manifestó sus ideas instintivas de cómo quería que posaran los modelos. Ya para 1925 Abbott tomaba fotos de sus amigos y poco después comenzó a mostrar su obra en público. Entre sus modelos había personalidades como Jean Cocteau, Peggy Guggenheim y Coco Chanel, además de sus amigos íntimos y amantes. Abbott comentó: “Me dejaba guiar mucho por mi intuición de las personas [...] trataba de captarlos sin posar”. A principios de los años treinta, cuando realizó este impresionante autorretrato que destaca sus ojos “deslumbrantes, de un turquesa glacial”, Abbott ya estaba apartándose del retrato para iniciar su crónica de la vida y la arquitectura de Nueva York.
- Topic
- Interior
- Self-portrait
- Berenice Abbott: Female
- Berenice Abbott: Literature\Writer
- Berenice Abbott: Visual Arts\Artist\Photographer
- Portrait
- See more items in
- National Portrait Gallery Collection
- Exhibition
- Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900-1939
- On View
- NPG, West Gallery 250
- Credit Line
- National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
- Data Source
- National Portrait Gallery
- Object number
- NPG.92.55
- Type
- Photograph
- Restrictions & Rights
- Usage conditions apply
- Copyright
- © Estate of Berenice Abbott, Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions
- Image/Sheet: 14.1 x 10.9cm (5 9/16 x 4 5/16")
- Mat: 45.7 x 35.6cm (18 x 14")
- Metadata Usage
- Usage conditions apply
- Record ID
- npg_NPG.92.55