{"id":27824,"date":"2025-02-20T11:42:27","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T09:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/?p=27824"},"modified":"2025-02-20T11:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T09:57:09","slug":"berenice-abbott-and-elizabeth-mccausland-at-the-heckscher-museum-of-art-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/berenice-abbott-and-elizabeth-mccausland-at-the-heckscher-museum-of-art-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland at the Heckscher Museum of Art, USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exhibition texts and images courtesy of the Heckscher Museum of Art, USA<\/em><\/p>\n

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\nInstallation view from Embracing the Parallax: Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland at the Heckscher Museum of Art, USA<\/em><\/p>\n

Embracing the Parallax: Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland<\/h2>\n

February 2 \u2013 March 30, 2025
\nat The Heckscher Museum of Art, USA<\/h4>\n

The renowned photobook Changing New York<\/em> (1939) was a collaboration between photographer Berenice Abbott (1898\u20131991) and her lifelong romantic partner, art critic and writer Elizabeth McCausland (1899\u20131965). Although recognized by art historians as a pivotal text of documentary photography, the published product was radically different from what the two women had envisioned. Abbott and McCausland wanted to redefine documentary photography\u2019s function by examining transformation through the lens of a rapidly modernizing New York City. Instead, their publisher diluted their message, producing a tourist guidebook for visitors to the 1939 New York World’s Fair.<\/p>\n

Embracing the Parallax<\/a><\/em> offers a new understanding of the women\u2019s partnership by reuniting a number of Abbott\u2019s photographs with portions of McCausland\u2019s original text. Parallax is an optical phenomenon in which the position of an object appears to shift when observed from different viewpoints\u2014whether it be a shift between the camera\u2019s viewfinder and lens, or a shift in one\u2019s perspective. Rather than simply documenting modernization from the perspective of aesthetic shifts, Abbott and McCausland intended to capture the invisible social, economic, and political factors that catalyzed these changes in the built environment. They believed that documentary photography was a tool to initiate dialogue and foster civic responsibility. \u201cWe cannot go on just looking at things on the surface,\u201d Abbott said. \u201cReal things today are conflict, contradictions, warfare, unbalance, lack of order, lack of reason\u2014contrasts in a rapidly changing civilization.\u201d Abbott and McCausland\u2019s philosophy of photography demands that we relearn how to see.<\/p>\n

Curated by Jessica Rosen, Curatorial Assistant<\/p>\n

 
\n\"\"
\nInstallation view from Embracing the Parallax: Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland at the Heckscher Museum of Art, USA<\/em><\/p>\n

Changing New York<\/h2>\n

During the Great Depression, with funding from the U.S. Government\u2019s Works Progress Administration, Abbott documented New York City with her camera. McCausland described her photographic series as \u201can epic of the metropolis united by [the] dynamic theme, change.\u201d Witnessing \u201cthe past jostling the present,\u201d Abbott captured the city in flux by depicting \u201cthe skyscraper in relation to the less colossal edifices which preceded it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1939, the duo began to work on a volume pairing Abbott\u2019s photography from the last four years with McCausland\u2019s writing. As they explored dynamic layouts, McCausland envisioned, \u201cwords and photographs marching along beside each other, complimenting each other, reinforcing each other.\u201d Yet their publisher rejected their ideas, reordering and eliminating some of Abbott’s photographs, and almost entirely rewriting McCausland\u2019s overtly political text. Their work was reduced to a commercially appealing series of images with short captions meant to serve the interests of the New York World\u2019s Fair. Society\u2019s systemic overlooking of women, lesbians, and photographers in the 1930s and beyond ultimately led to an abandonment of their original vision.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\nInstallation view from Embracing the Parallax: Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland at the Heckscher Museum of Art, USA<\/em><\/p>\n

 
\n\"\"
\nBerenice Abbott, Parallax (Candles), 1951. Silver gelatin print, The Heckscher Museum of Art, Gift of Mr. Morton Brozinsky, 1983.10.6.<\/em><\/p>\n

Capturing Reality by Illuminating the Unseen<\/h2>\n

Throughout her career, Abbott upheld the philosophy of photography that she developed with McCausland: exposing the invisible forces that shape our world. Abbott documented the impact of the rapid modernization of America, both before and after her project Changing New York<\/em>. In 1935, she and McCausland took a month-long road trip through parts of the Midwest and South; in 1954, Abbott and two colleagues travelled the length of the East Coast on U.S. Route 1. In her documentary photographs, Abbott sought to “get under the very skin of reality” as a way of spurring others to embrace their civic responsibilities.<\/p>\n

In the 40s and 50s, Abbott turned to photographing scientific phenomena. She explained, \u201cwe live in a world made by science. But we\u2014millions of laymen\u2014do not understand or appreciate the knowledge which thus controls daily life.\u201d Abbott continued her commitment to rendering the invisible visible in order to educate the public.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Related Links<\/h2>\n

Read more: Embracing the Parallax: Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland<\/a>
\nArt Book: Berenice Abbott A Life in Photography by Julia Van Haaften (2018)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Embracing the Parallax: Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland
\nFebruary 2 \u2013 March 30, 2025
\nat The Heckscher Museum of Art, USA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27826,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1466,22],"tags":[779,1679],"class_list":["post-27824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-northeastern-united-states","category-photography","tag-berenice-abbott","tag-elizabeth-mccausland"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.femininemoments.dk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}