**The recreation of a landmark in 1930s documentary photography.
**
The 1939 book Changing New York by Berenice Abbott, with text by
Elizabeth McCausland, is a landmark of American documentary photography
and the career-defining publication by one of modernism's most prominent
photographers. Yet no one has ever seen the book that Abbott and
McCausland actually planned and wrote. In this book, art historian Sarah
M. Miller recreates Abbott and McCausland's original manuscript for
Changing New York by sequencing Abbott's one hundred photographs with
McCausland's astonishing caption texts. This reconstruction is
accompanied by a selection of archival documents that illuminate how the
project was developed, and how the original publisher drastically
altered it.
Miller analyzes the manuscript and its revisions to unearth Abbott and
McCausland's critical engagement with New York City's built environment
and their unique theory of documentary photography. The battle over
Changing New York, she argues, stemmed from disputes over how Abbott's
photographs--and photography more broadly--should shape urban experience
on the eve of the futuristic 1939 World's Fair. Ultimately it became a
contest over the definition of documentary itself. Gary Van Zante and
Julia Van Haaften contribute an essay on Abbott's archive and the
partnership with McCausland that shaped their creative collaboration.
Copublished with Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto