BEARING WITNESS

OrpheumLofts, Phoenix, Arizona.

By MICHAELPERKINS

ATTHIS WRITING (June 2018), reviews are rolling in for Julia Van Haaften’s new biography, BereniceAbbott: ALife InPhotography, acelebration of the greatest visual chronicler of New York City’s perpetually parade of architectural extinctions. Abbott’s essential album of vanishing neighborhoods in the five boroughs, ChangingNewYork, shot in stunning crispness with an 8×10 Century Universal view camera, has stood, since the 1930’s, as more than a stunning technical achievement: it has also been hailed, rightfully, as a priceless sociological record.

TheLofts‘ tenantentrance.

Abbott was an objectivist, the Joe Friday of photographers, believing that images could only be honest by providing just the facts, ma’am. As 20th century shooters sought to insert more of themselves….their feelings, their beliefs, their biases.. into increasingly personal work, Berenice and her camera became two…