1989 Infinity Award: Master of Photography

Berenice Abbott spent the early part of her artistic career studying sculpture in New York, Berlin, and Paris, where she worked as Man Ray's studio assistant. Through Man Ray, she met Eugène Atget, whose archives she purchased upon his death.

In 1929, Abbott returned to the United States, where she embarked on her best-known body of work—a documentation of New York City for which she developed her famous bird's-eye and worm's-eye points-of-view. She worked on the project independently then secured funding through the Works Progress Administration. Her pictures were later published as Changing New York (1939).