login   password  artist portfolio  gallery portfolio  MYabsolutearts 
absolutearts.com
 
help   |  media kit   |  about us   |  services   |  contact  
  NEWEST TRENDS                .   SEARCH   .   BUY   .   JOIN   .   COLLECT   .   RESEARCH   .   READ  .   DISCUSS  
Indepth Arts News:

"North and South: Berenice Abbott's U.S. Route 1"
2000-09-21 until 2000-12-03
Portland Museum of Art
Portland, ME, USA

During the summer of 1954, photographer Berenice Abbott set off with two companions to tour the expanse of Route 1. The group left from New York City and drove south to Key West, Florida. There, they turned around retracing their route until they reached the last northerly point; Fort Kent, Maine. During this excursion Abbott took more than 2,400 negatives. She devoted the next two years developing prints and a prospectus illustrating the historical importance of the project. Her goal was to capture the character of the time in the ever transient face of America. North and South: Berenice Abbott's U.S. Route 1 will be on view from September 21, 2000 through December 3, 2000 at the Portland Museum of Art.

What is interesting about this show is that it is a complete body of work in a concentrated time, said Aprile Gallant, Curator of Prints, Drawing, & Photographs. Abbott works to preserve sites that are specifically 1954, rather than documenting the progression of years. Abbott's goal was for people to remember and see it as it was. Typically, Berenice Abbott has taken years to journal Paris and New York City, in contrast the Route 1 documentation allowed her only one moment of one summer with her selected subject matter.

North and South: Berenice Abbott's U.S. Route 1 captures a variety of subject matter, from the ferris wheels that spotted the landscape to the people who inhabited it. She wanted to capture what was familiar, the things that are overlooked until they are gone. Abbott's portraits of Maine potato farmers and Georgia peach pickers caught the flavor of everyday life. Cruising along the coast Abbott documented the individual cities and towns. These images demonstrate a fondness of detail with which she defined the character of the area.

After her summer touring the east coast, Abbott rarely mentioned the Route 1 photographs. The public focused on her New York work and her scientific photographs. Abbott saw her role as a photgrapher to be centered around capturing whatever she was photographing as it was at that moment; the Route 1 pictures are exactly that, a chronicle of the summer of 1954 on Route 1. She showed the people and the places just as they were, without embelishment or editorializing. She once said in an interview, In broad terms the work I have done here is really the American scene, which I think is important to photograph because the United States is such a changing country and is still young. Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed the subject becomes part of the past.

IMAGE:
Berenice Abbott (United States, 1898,1991),
Untitled, Parking Meters, Augusta, Georgia, 1954,
8 x 10 inches,
vintage gelatin silver print.
The Syracuse University Art Collection.


Related Links:


 
Call for Artists : Emerging Artists 2010 - SlowArt Productions


Robert Sagerman : Workings - Brian Gross Fine Art


Elena Osterwalder : From Earth - Latino Art Museum


Catherine Foster and Sheryl Allen CoHost New Radio Show - Art and Soul Radio


CARLOS ESTEVEZ: IMAGES OF THOUGHT - UB Art Gallery


Kevin Yates : New Cast Bronze Sculptures - Susan Hobbs Gallery


Call for Artists : 2010 CALIFORNIA CLAY COMPETITION - Artery - Artist Cooperative of Davis


Who Shot Rock and Roll : A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present - Brooklyn Museum of Art


Nick Veasey : New and Recent Works - Maddox Arts


 

indepth arts search:     
 
Free Arts News Subscription | Browse the Arts | Artist Portfolios | International Arts News | Arts News Archive | Privacy Policy