Berenice Abbott
Portrait by Yousuf Karsh

Back in Paris she became an assistant to the photographer, Man Ray (1923--5), and then opened her own portrait studio (1926--9); one of her best-known portraits was of James Joyce.

Meanwhile, she had discovered the work of Eugene Atget (1857--1927), the French photographer known for his semidocumentary studies of cityscapes and activities in Paris and its suburbs; on his death she acquired his archives and thereafter promoted his work.

She went back to New York City and worked as an independent documentary and portrait photographer (1929--68); she occasionally did commissions for Fortune and other magazines, but became best known for the series she did for the Federal Art Project (under the Works Progress Administration), a thorough and sensitive documentation of Manhattan during the 1930s, published as Changing New York (1939).

In 1940 she turned to a new subject, capturing in photographs such scientific phenomena as magnetism, gravity, and motion; some of her work was used to illustrate high school physics texts. She also taught photography at the New School for Social Research (1935--68).

Her final major projects included photographing a series on rural California and US Route 1 from Maine to Florida. In 1968 she moved up to Maine where she worked until near her death.