Seventh Avenue Looking North from 35th Street, Manhattan
Berenice Abbott
Description
Recent Acquisitions: Curators Choice Part I, November 12, 2011-March 18, 2012
Berenice Abbott
United States, 1896–1991
Seventh Avenue Looking North from 35th Street, New York
1936
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Ellen and William Kahn, 2008/2.272
Subject Matter:
Berenice Abbott was very precise in her description of this photograph, articulating the direction of her angle, the location of her camera, and even identifying the surrounding buildings. The photograph itself offers a different experience of New York City, from an angle so high up that the specificity of the location seems beside the point. Instead, Abbott's birds-eye view reduces the skyscrapers and bustling midtown traffic into dots and rectangles. This geometric order is dynamically bisected by the street, which leads the eye from the lower right to upper left corner of the image. A particularly nice detail is the light reflected on the building in the foreground, which hugs the perimeter of the structure and reiterates the line of the street below.
Physical Description:
View down at 7th Avenue, looking north, from the 46-story Nelson Tower at 450 Seventh Avenue.
Usage Rights:
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