The historic collaboration between innovative photographer Berenice Abbott and writer Muriel Rukeyser – two of the twentieth century’s most remarkable female artists – published here for the first time
In the 1940s, American photographer Berenice Abbott developed the Super Sight camera: a pioneering device that captured precise close-up images in striking detail. Using it, Abbott turned its lens on simple, everyday objects – a hand, a bird’s wing, an apple, a walnut – creating large-format, black-and-white photographs.
Abbott began to collaborate with the renowned writer Muriel Rukeyser on a project that would pair Abbott's Super Sight photographs with Rukeyser's texts. Together, the photos and writing explore the intersections of art, science, gender, sexuality, and perception, resulting in a compelling collaboration well ahead of its time. For years, the pair sought to publish their project, but faced repeated rejection from the primarily male cultural gatekeepers of the era.
Accompanying a major exhibition at The New York Public Library, Super Sight is the long-overdue publication of Abbott and Rukeyser’s project. This compelling book presents all of Abbott’s known Super Sight photographs, alongside Rukeyser’s original introduction to their joint project, and handwritten ephemera. Super Sight also showcases never-before-seen archival materials and new scholarship, including by the pre-eminent Rukeyser expert, Rowena Kennedy-Epstein.
Visually stunning and intellectually exciting, this volume at last allows contemporary art and photography enthusiasts the opportunity to explore a historic collaboration by two of the twentieth century’s most forward-thinking creative minds.
