Modernism in American Photography

The Modern Art Permanent Collection currently hosts works by two celebrated American photographers, Edward Weston and Berenice Abbott. Photography greatly influenced the evolution of modern art by challenging or reinforcing realist expression, and introducing photographs themselves for use either as references in the creative process or as ready-made materials incorporated into the actual artwork. Additionally, photography’s struggle for recognition within the art world has generated various developments within the medium itself. Here we see this struggle in two different examples from the 1930s: the modernist photography of Berenice Abbott with its straightforward criticism of New York’s transformation into a tumultuous, angular, and functional metropolis, contrasted by Edward Weston’s sharp focus on the organic and universal forms of the human body,vegetables, and the natural West Coast landscape. Berenice Abbott