Identity Isn't Everything: How I Came to Write a Biography of Berenice Abbott
Presentation Type
Presentation
Start Date
8-3-2025 5:40 PM
Description
Julia Van Haaften, Founding Curator of the New York Public Library’s photography collection
Identity Isn't Everything: How I Came to Write a Biography of Berenice Abbott
It was the privilege of a lifetime to know the American photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991). I will discuss how I, a self-taught 19th-century photography specialist who began as an art librarian, wound up championing the work of Berenice Abbott and discovering many of the “hidden corners” in her life that stymied her life companion and collaborator Elizabeth McCausland who had tried a biography of Berenice in the 1950s. Though I knew Abbott for only three years at the end of her life, our acquaintance launched a project that lasted more than two decades. Opposites certainly attract, but we shared an aesthetic compatibility, a certain sort of personal reticence temperamentally, and a sensitivity to being pigeon-holed as a woman anything—our feminism was a priori to our lives, not its purpose. We were utterly different people—generationally, sexually, sociologically—but when the chance came to write a biography, I looked forward to learning much more about the person behind the work I admired so greatly.
Julia Van Haaften was the founding curator of the New York Public Library’s photography collection in 1982, having recognized that the library’s general holdings contained many original prints of esthetic and historical value. She was responsible for several important acquisitions including Anna Atkins and Eugène Atget. She also played a key role in the digitization program of the library and the online digital collections system of the Museum of the City of New York. She organized a score of photography exhibitions for NYPL; for both institutions she developed and directed numerous collection cataloging and management projects. She earned a BA in art history from Barnard College and an MLS degree from Columbia University. She is the author of a major biography of Berenice Abbott, Berenice Abbott: A Life In Photography (W. W. Norton 2018), and the co-author, with her husband Ron Schick, of The View From Space: American Astronaut Photography, 1962-1972 (Clarkson Potter 1988).
Relational Format
Conference proceeding
Recommended Citation
Van Haaften, Julia, "Identity Isn't Everything: How I Came to Write a Biography of Berenice Abbott" (2025). Women of Photography: A 24-Hour Conference-a-thon Celebrating International Women’s Day 2025. 50.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/womenofphotography/2025/schedule/50
Identity Isn't Everything: How I Came to Write a Biography of Berenice Abbott
Julia Van Haaften, Founding Curator of the New York Public Library’s photography collection
Identity Isn't Everything: How I Came to Write a Biography of Berenice Abbott
It was the privilege of a lifetime to know the American photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991). I will discuss how I, a self-taught 19th-century photography specialist who began as an art librarian, wound up championing the work of Berenice Abbott and discovering many of the “hidden corners” in her life that stymied her life companion and collaborator Elizabeth McCausland who had tried a biography of Berenice in the 1950s. Though I knew Abbott for only three years at the end of her life, our acquaintance launched a project that lasted more than two decades. Opposites certainly attract, but we shared an aesthetic compatibility, a certain sort of personal reticence temperamentally, and a sensitivity to being pigeon-holed as a woman anything—our feminism was a priori to our lives, not its purpose. We were utterly different people—generationally, sexually, sociologically—but when the chance came to write a biography, I looked forward to learning much more about the person behind the work I admired so greatly.
Julia Van Haaften was the founding curator of the New York Public Library’s photography collection in 1982, having recognized that the library’s general holdings contained many original prints of esthetic and historical value. She was responsible for several important acquisitions including Anna Atkins and Eugène Atget. She also played a key role in the digitization program of the library and the online digital collections system of the Museum of the City of New York. She organized a score of photography exhibitions for NYPL; for both institutions she developed and directed numerous collection cataloging and management projects. She earned a BA in art history from Barnard College and an MLS degree from Columbia University. She is the author of a major biography of Berenice Abbott, Berenice Abbott: A Life In Photography (W. W. Norton 2018), and the co-author, with her husband Ron Schick, of The View From Space: American Astronaut Photography, 1962-1972 (Clarkson Potter 1988).
Comments
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