![[Repair Shop, Christopher Street]](/api/proxy-image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.getty.edu%2Fiiif%2Fimage%2F0007c887-9bd2-4432-93d5-ad41cad63f23%2Ffull%2F808%2C%2F0%2Fdefault.jpg)
Getty Museum
[Repair Shop, Christopher Street]
Creator
Berenice AbbottAmerican Photographer · 1898–1991
All works by this person →> The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective. What I mean by objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human being with the mystery of personal selection at the heart of it. The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the v
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- about 1946
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- caa63232-da1c-436c-be5c-e7ade2d4a369
A large clock in the window of this repair shop alludes to the work of Surrealist artists of the 1930s, who frequently illustrated watch faces in their paintings about memory and time. When Berenice Abbott photographed this shop in New York's Greenwich Village, the area had for some time been known as a bohemian enclave inhabited mostly by artists and writers. While in Paris in the 1920s, Abbott was influenced by the documentary photography of Eugène Atget, whose collection of Paris images often included ubiquitous elements such as doorways and delivery wagons. After returning to the United States, Abbott photographed common scenes and places in New York City in a straightforward manner similar to Atget's approach in Paris.
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