Description:
block of commercial buildings with signs for Coca Cola and Lemon
Label Text:
Here, Abbott depicts commercial text as an integral part of the developing urban environment. Funded through the New Deal’s Federal Art Project beginning in 1935, Abbott’s ambitious project of capturing the rapid transformations of New York—likely inspired by Eugène Atget’s documentation of Paris—was published as a book entitled Changing New York in 1939. Row of Commercial Buildings, although not included in that volume, was one of 305 photographs Abbott took for the project. The majority of her New York photographs emphasize structural manifestations of change, reducing human presence to a trace. Row of Commercial Buildings exemplifies this: the three men outside Duffy’s Pharmacy, though near the center of the composition, appear so small that they could be overlooked. Instead, Abbott records evidence of life in the environment, such as the signs for Ashley Ice Cream and Coca-Cola in the pharmacy’s windows.
MD, PHOTOdocument exhibition, March 30, 2012-July 22, 2012
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1998.199 |
