Starrett-Leigh Building, Eleventh Avenue, West 27th Street, Manhattan, 1936

Its imposing glass and steel façade rising to its full height in the photograph, the Starrett-Leigh building in Manhattan cuts its straight lines against a grey sky.

This photograph is part of "Changing New York", the huge project that occupied American photographer Berenice Abbott from 1935 to 1939. Her aim was to draw the most exhaustive portrait possible of the metropolis, then undergoing a metamorphosis, with the help of her camera alone. Calling it as much an artistic project as a documentary one, her many original points of view, innovative framing and shallow depths, as in this shot, underscore New York’s conquest of height.

Starrett-Leigh Building, Eleventh Avenue, West 27th Street, Manhattan, 1936 was exhibited for the first time by the Pinault Collection at the 2019 "Luogo e Segni" ("Place and Signs") show at the Punta della Dogana in Venice.