[Manhattan Bridge]

Berenice Abbott

1936 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

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."

Artist

Berenice Abbott

Date

1936

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Gift of Phyllis D. Massar, 1971