See a Stunning Photo of New York City From Above in 1932
In her dazzling portraits of a metropolis on the rise, Berenice Abbott captured the city that never sleeps
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Standing at the top of the Empire State Building in the late December chill, Berenice Abbott knew she only had one chance. The photograph she planned to take required a 15-minute exposure, and this was the only evening of the year when the sky would be dark for long enough before the city’s office workers turned out their lights and went home.
“She’s hauling this large-format camera around and trying to focus the image,” says Grace Hanselman, curator of a retrospective opening in July at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts to mark the centennial of Abbott’s first photographs. “She’s in the dark, too. It’s incredibly difficult.”
Best known for her pictures of New York in the 1930s, as well as for portraits of fellow artists and writers in 1920s Paris, the Ohio-born Abbott, who followed her passions where they led her, seemingly embodied the 20th century—and she helped shape its visual language as she captured the consummate modern city. “I was shocked and excited by New York, its changes,” she told an interviewer in 1989. “I unwittingly became a trailblazer.”
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This article is a selection from the July/August 2025 issue of Smithsonian magazine
