Berenice Abbott

One in a series of books of Abbott's images to be published by Steidl that individually explores the diverse aspects of her career. This volume represents Abbott's earliest photographic venture. The images in this book were scanned from the original glass plate negatives. In their honesty and clarity, they illustrate the guiding philosophy of all of her subsequent work as a photographer. All of the photographs in this book were scanned at full size from Berenice Abbott's original glass plates. Abbott herself conceived a book of her portraits, carefully deciding the cropping of each image. This book shows two consecutive reproductions of each photograph: the first shows Abbott's cropping, the second reveals the entire glass plate.

In Albert Wendt's new poems, his first collection for over a decade, snapshots of the close and familiar contrast with strange and mythical sequences from a vast Pacific epic in progress and a vivid impressionistic montage of global travel in the late twentieth century. The rich diversity and range of Photographs is astonishing, as this complex writer moves with ease and fluency from ancient Polynesia to contemporary China to family celebrations in an Auckland garden, and through a variety of tones and voices. The collection celebrates grandchildren, family, ancestors and a heritage that stretches back to the atua; and shows a profound and compassionate understanding of the ways we now live in these islands.

"This web presentation includes all 307 images from Abbott's 1935-1939 Changing New York project, and the full text of the unparalleled publication, Berenice Abbott: Changing New York (The New Press, 1997)."