If you were an American artist or writer in the 1920s, Paris was where you wanted to be. She had lived in New York once, just eight years before, but in her absence the city had been scaled up: new skyscrapers were rising, the population was exploding, and every block, it seemed, was abuzz with commerce and construction. (The market crash of October 1929 was still many months away). Suddenly, Paris was passé. The exhibition’s focus is a disbound scrapbook with seven to nine photographs per page, all taken over the course of that year, as Abbott paced the streets (and piers, bridges and train platforms) with a hand-held camera and a compulsion to capture New York’s unruly, cutthroat modernity.

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Persons: Berenice Abbott, —, Man Ray, James Joyce, Djuna Barnes, “ Bernice ”, Berenice, ”, Abbott, “, Berenice Abbott’s Organizations: Metropolitan Museum Locations: American, Paris, Springfield , Ohio, New York, “, Lower Manhattan, United States