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[Manhattan Bridge]

1936
Not on view
The Brooklyn Bridge was New York’s first and most famous, but Abbott favored the all-steel Manhattan Bridge, completed in 1909. She made this photograph on the southern pedestrian walkway; the vibrations of the suspension bridge required a fast shutter speed to avoid blur. "I seem to veer toward waterfronts," she later said. "As Melville wrote in Moby Dick, the heart of a port city is around its waterfront, and by nature I seem to head right there. Perhaps I should have been a sailor—boats and bridges have always fascinated me."

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: [Manhattan Bridge]
  • Artist: Berenice Abbott (American, Springfield, Ohio 1898–1991 Monson, Maine)
  • Date: 1936
  • Medium: Gelatin silver print
  • Classification: Photographs
  • Credit Line: Gift of Phyllis D. Massar, 1971
  • Object Number: 1971.550.5
  • Rights and Reproduction: © Berenice Abbott / Commerce Graphics Ltd. Inc.
  • Curatorial Department: Photographs

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