Field of View: Berenice Abbot

I'd heard the name slung around the classrooms by tutors and fellow students alike since the course began. Before this, I'd read her name in a small photography book I have, Masters of Photography: Classic Photographic Artists of our Time (given to me for my birthday last year; one of her images features on the front cover). But something inside of me prevented me from fully looking at her work... Until now.

Born in Springfield Ohio in 1898, Abbot seems a perfect one to use to discuss filed of view. After the death of her key inspiration, Eugene Atget, in 1927, who she produced famous portraits for, she became the main advocate of his work, almost to the extent of suffocating the publicity of her own. However, according to Reuel Golden, "the clarity of vision that she saw in Atget's photography, its direct and effective grasp of the texture of reality informed her own work" (1).

Abbot set about photographing New York City vigorously in 1935, after being hired by the Federal Art Project, producing 305 photographs (exhibited at The Museum of the City of New York), that later became her her most famous book, Changing New York, which published in 1939. It will be this book I will be extracting examples from to show the wide range and field of view employed in this mammoth of works.

This medium focal length shot (for wont of a better description) was shown to us by one of our tutors. Shot from below, Abbot manages to capture both the silhouetted girder in the foreground and the misty ambient light that fogs the rest of the scene. Nice image.

Fifth Avenue Houses.
I know from the kinds of pictures I take of buildings, that not only is field of view important, but also its close bosom buddy, composition. More often than not, architectural photography is most striking when the whole building dominates the scene. An obvious point maybe, but then the vantage point is also of relevance. Naturally shots are taken from the side, as in this case, capturing the light on the facade and shadow on the side. Below is one of mine I quite like:

Mohawk in Blue.
f11, 1/320, ISO100, 24mm.
A similar vantage point to Abbot's, and one whose aspect shows both the front and one side of the building.

I am going to very lazily state that this image is influenced by Atget. I myself love 'lots of different types of the same things in order' in an image. To quote Abbot: "the shrewd business sense which plastered them solid over the entire window area produced, as it were by chance, an esthetic by-product: the whole has homogeneity and variety of texture, simultaneously, which give the picture interest" (Berenice Abbott, New Guide to Better Photography, 1953) (2).

Chelsea Hotel, 222 West 23rd Street, 1936.

I was about to say: "here Abbot has dramatically reduced her field of view". But this would be to confuse field of view with an image's overall composition. Abbot has merely chose to 'home in' on one part of the building, yet the field of view remains quite wide. 

1)  Golden, R (2008), Masters of Photography: Classic Photographic Artists of our Time, London: Carlton.

2)  http://www.artsmia.org/get-the-picture/print/abbott.shtml#