Berenice Abbott

The subjects of Abbott's earliest photography project, now published in full for the first time as Paris Portraits 1925-1930, are never dull--particularly the women, who, in a dismissal of her male colleague's efforts, she aspired to capture as more than pretty objects. --Prudence Peiffer The New York Review of Books [The book] features 115 portraits of 83 subjects that have been scanned from the original glass negatives and printed in full, as well as the final crops as Abbott intended. The juxtaposing result, as O'Neal told In Sight, allows you to see her process. You see what she is doing. You see an artist at work. --Karly Domb Sadof The Washington Post a pristine collection examining the first phase of [Abbott's] career as a portrait photographer--Lew Whittington New York Journal of Books She lived with Djuna Barnes, photographed Man Ray, and taught Marcel Duchamp how to dance. Upon the release of a book showcasing her famous Paris Portraits, we discover the woman behind the camera.--Carey Dunne Another Magazine a deeply intimate view into these quiet yet powerful photographs--Miss Rosen Feature Shoot There is a unity in Abbott's portraiture--finely presented in Steidl's indispensible Paris Portraits: 1925-1930...the ambiguity a product of the interaction between Abbott and her sitter. Her great achievement was to capture this fleeting milieu, on neither her nor her subjects' terms exclusively, but on the fertile middle ground.--Julian Cosma Art News ...it's the uncropped plates that turn Berenice Abbott - Paris Portraits 1925-1930 into the treasure it is, one of the finest photobooks I have come across this year.--Hank O'Neal cphmag.com Inventor, entrepreneur, and proud proto-feminist Berenice Abbott was many things in addition to a pioneering photographer, but Steidl's gorgeous Paris Portraits 1925-1930 focuses on this discrete body of work; it's reportedly the first in a series of Abbott titles, the rest of which can't come soon enough.--John DeFore The Hollywood Reporter