![[Lower East Side] / [Poultry Market, New York City]](/api/proxy-image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.getty.edu%2Fiiif%2Fimage%2F12e87503-d410-4546-9339-4620432d8e62%2Ffull%2F808%2C%2F0%2Fdefault.jpg)
Getty Museum
[Lower East Side] / [Poultry Market, New York City]
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 1936
- Medium
- Gelatin silver print
- Culture
- American
- Department
- Photographs
- Institution
- Getty Museum
- Object ID
- eac38a87-1305-4c67-9f22-eee5c1e3011b
Berenice Abbott was inspired to photograph New York City after returning from Paris, where she had encountered the documentary images of Eugène Atget. Throughout the 1930s Abbott photographed New York's apartment buildings, elevated trains, street peddlers, storefronts, bridges, and skyscrapers. She amassed a body of work that, as one contemporary critic stated, showed people "how to see New York." Shaped like a rooster, the poultry sign in this image was surely a beacon in the neighborhood, especially when lit. Abbott directed her camera upward to make this image, resulting in an oblique perspective of the apartment building and its iron balconies.
The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
Get printable QR codesHide QR codes
Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.
Related across collections
Semantically similar works from Getty Museum and other institutions.