Welcome to 1930s America, the Wall Street Crash, Cadillacs that shine like mirrors and iconic Art Déco skyscrapers: After Lee Miller, Lisette Model and Diane Arbus, the Jeu de Paume continues its ‘great 20th-century female photographers’ theme with Berenice Abbott (1898-1991), a student of Man Ray who arrived in Paris in the roaring twenties.
As well as her über-famous ‘Changing New York’ series, this retrospective (the first of its kind in France to cover her entire career) reveals lesser-known elements of Abbott's talent: Portraits of Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and even James Joyce (all taken in Paris in the 20s), stand alongside abstract, almost surrealist images taken in the 1950s. Abbott was an active member of the avant-garde movement, yet had a richness of approach that drew on documentary photography and photographic realism, so with over 140 clichés on show, this is one wonderful black-and-white trip down memory lane.