Item Details:

THE PARABOLIC MIRROR HAS A THOUSAND EYES

BERENICE ABBOTT

SURREALISM, 1959

Gelatin Silver Print

Parabolic mirror, made of many small flat sections, reflecting one eye.

Size: 10.8 x 13.63 in; 27.31 x 34.61 cm

Signed: in pencil, on mount recto

Berenice Abbott's photographic innovations and inventions included a distortion enlarging easel, which created unusual effects on images, and the telescopic lighting pole, known today by many studio photographers as an "autopole," to which lights can be attached at any level. Abbott's style of straight photography helped her make important contributions to scientific photography. She once stated, "We live in a world made by science. There needs to be a friendly interpreter between science and the layman. I believe photography can be this spokesman, as no other form of expression can be." From 1958 to 1960, she produced a series of photographs for a high-school physics textbook, developed by the Physical Science Study Committee project based at MIT to improve secondary school physics teaching. Her work included images of wave patterns in water and stroboscopic images of moving objects, such as Bouncing ball in diminishing arcs, which was featured on the cover of the textbook. She contributed to the understanding of physical laws and properties of solids and liquids though her studies of light and motion. Between 1958 and 1961, she made a series of photographs for Educational Services Inc., which were later published. They were subsequently presented by the Smithsonian Institution in an exhibition titled Image of Physics. In 2012, some of her work from this era was displayed at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts.