Drug Store, Whelan's, 44th Street and 8th Avenue, Manhattan, 1936

Whelan's Drug Store, 44th Street and 8th Avenue, Manhattan, 1936 brings us inside a 1930s New York drugstore. In the absence of any people, this view, however banal, looks like an odd stage set saturated by the formal echo of the multiplied objects.

The picture is from "Changing New York", the huge project Berenice Abbott worked on from 1935 to 1939 to comprehensively capture the façades and interiors being built in the burgeoning city. Her approach, documentary and artistic at the same time, pays tribute to the unique, little-known work of Eugène Atget, which she saw during a stay in Paris. She shared his fascination with shopfronts and interiors, which are almost always captured in solitude with poetic accents.

Whelan's Drug Store, 44th Street and 8th Avenue, Manhattan, 1936 was presented for the first time by the Pinault Collection at the "Luogo e Segni" ("Place and Signs") show at the Punta della Dogana in Venice in 2019.