Murlberry and Prince Streets, Manhattan, October 25, 1935

1935

Silver print

20.2 x 25.3 cm (7 15/16 x 9 15/16 in.)

The dark, ghostly silhouette of a passer-by in the foreground seems to be running through a modest Manhattan intersection, giving this seemingly banal photograph a disquieting strangeness.

American photographer Berenice Abbott took this picture, Mulberry and Prince Streets, Manhattan, October 25, 1935, for her massive "Changing New York" project, which she worked on from 1935 to 1939. Aiming to produce an objective, exhaustive portrait of the fast-changing city, she does not seem to have left out any motif, neighbourhood or social stratum. Far from being systematic, the aesthetics of her simultaneously documentary and artistic photographs accept, as here, the accidental.

Mulberry and Prince Streets, Manhattan, October 25, 1935 was presented for the first time by the Pinault Collection at the exhibition "Luogo e Segni" ("Place and Signs") at the Punta della Dogana in Venice in 2019.
Exhibitions
Berenice Abbott's other artwork