James Joyce, Paris

When Abbott photographed James Joyce (1882-1941) in 1926 he was one of the most important writers in Paris and at the center of the expatriate literary circle that frequented Sylvia Beach's bookshop Shakespeare and Company. Beach had published Joyce's revolutionary work Ulysses in 1922 and was doubtless responsible for arranging this session with the young American photographer who had begun her career the previous year as a darkroom assistant to Man Ray, but who, like him, was now also becoming a favorite photographer of the avant-garde expatriate set in Paris. At the time of the sitting, Joyce was engaged in his most ambitious undertaking, Finnegans Wake, and was suffering both from criticism that it was unreadable and from a painful eye condition that kept him home at 2 Square Robiac (where this portrait was made) and required him to wear an eye patch. Abbott's portrait is more like a mirror reflection than a professional portrayal, revealing a complex and sympathetic character Djuna Barnes so aptly described as "the Grand Inquisitor come to judge himself."