Pingpank Barbershop, 413 Bleecker Street, Manhattan

Berenice Abbott

May 18, 1938 · Gelatin silver print · Photographs

In this close-up view of a simple shopkeeper’s window in New York City, Abbott composed an image that recalls in its composition and subject matter the work of her aesthetic hero, the French documentarian Eugène Atget. The slightly oblique composition delicately balances words and images, inside and outside, past and present. August Pingpank was eighty-seven when Abbott photographed his storefront at 413 Bleecker Street. He was one of the oldest barbers in the city and lamented to the Federal Art Project workers assisting Abbott that he would soon have to retire due to the invention of the safety razor: “It’s different now with the men shaving themselves every morning at home.” The photograph is one of more than three hundred Abbott made for her landmark Depression-era project “Changing New York.”

Artist

Berenice Abbott

Date

May 18, 1938

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Department

Photographs

Credit line

Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2013