Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) was a revolutionary documentary photographer best known for her black-and-white images of New York City during the 1930s. Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio, and studied for one year at Ohio State University, Columbus, before moving to New York in 1918, where she became acquainted with artists, writers, and other luminaries of the time, including author Djuna Barnes, philosopher Kenneth Burke, and fellow artists Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray. She pursued journalism, theater, and sculpture before moving to Europe in 1921. While in Europe, Abbott became involved with photography for the first time, working as an assistant to May Ray in Paris. Abbott found herself drawn to photography herself, later writing, "I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else." Impressed by her work, Ray allowed her to use his studio and darkroom. In 1926, Abbott had her first solo exhibition in the gallery Au Sacre du Printemps. She also began her own studio and pursued studies in Berlin before returning to Paris in 1927. Abbott's subjects during these years were her fellow artists and writers, particularly those involved with avant-garde art movements: film director Jacques Cocteau, expatriate author James Joyce, artist Max Ernst, and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. Abbott's work gained in prestige and she was exhibited at the Salon de l'Escalier and at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. In 1925, Man Ray introduced Abbott to the work of Eugène Atget, and she quickly became a great admirer of his work. After Atget's death in 1927, Abbott acquired a portion of his archive and promoted his work through books, essays, and a portfolio, culminating in the sale of the archive to the Museum of Modern Art in 1968. Her efforts helped Atget's work gain international recognition. In early 1929, Abbott returned to New York City to find a publisher for Atget's photographs. Yet seeing the city again after years away, she visualized what was to become her major life's work: a photographic portrait of the changing city landscape and its populace. She returned to Paris, closed her studio, moved back to New York City, and began to document the city using a large-format 8x10 camera. Her photographs of the city were inspired in many ways by the work of Atget's she held in such high regard. She was particularly interested in the rapid physical changes the city had undergone, with smaller neighborhoods being dwarfed by the proliferation of skyscrapers. She worked independently on her New York project for the following six years; unable to procure financial support, she worked as a commercial photographer and a teacher. In 1935, Abbott was hired by the Federal Art Project to oversee her Changing New York project, continuing to photograph the city but using assistants in the field and the sudio. At the end of the project, she had produced 305 photographs which became the property of the Museum of the City of New York. She also published the photographs from the series as a book entitled Changing New York. "Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium," Abbott said, "it has to walk alone; it has to be itself." Abbott became picture editor for Science Illustrated in the 1940s and continued to work in that capacity through the 1960s, making important contributions to the field of scientific photography. Following a lung operation, Abbott moved to Maine in 1966, where she lived and worked until her death in 1991.