Berenice Abbott (Primary Title)
Man Ray, American, 1890 - 1976 (Artist)
The American photographer Berenice Abbott (1898–1991) was born Bernice Abbott in Springfield, Ohio. After studying journalism at Ohio State University, she decided to become a sculptor and moved to Paris in March 1921. There, she adopted the French spelling of her name, Berenice, at the suggestion of Jean Cocteau. This photograph is one of the earliest portraits that Man Ray made in Paris, as well as one of his most daring and successful. Man Ray wanted to test out a new lens, so he photographed Abbott, seated on a trunk against a plain burlap backdrop in his hotel room, whose empty space fills almost the entire top half of the photograph. Emerging from the lower edge, Abbott’s elfin features and brightly lit head and hands appear to float, as if disembodied, while her eyes meet the viewer’s with a penetrating gaze. During her stay in Paris, Abbott shifted her focus from sculpture to photography, which she mastered while working as Man Ray’s darkroom assistant between 1923 and 1926.
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