Heckscher Museum of Art: ‘Embracing the Parallax: Berenice Abbott & Elizabeth McCausland’, 2/2nd to 3.30th

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Embracing the Parallax:

Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland

February 2 – March 30, 2025

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The exhibition offers new understanding of the key partnership in the pivotal Changing New York book, finally reuniting Abbott’s photographs with McCausland’s original text.

Huntington — Embracing the Parallax: Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland will highlight twenty-two gelatin silver prints from the collection with a focus on photographs from the important Changing New York series of the 1930s.

The celebrated photobook Changing New York (1939) was a collaboration between photographer Berenice Abbott (1898 – 1991) and her lifelong romantic partner, art critic and writer Elizabeth McCausland (1899 – 1965). Although recognized by art historians as a pivotal text of documentary photography, the published product was radically different from what the tow women had envisioned.

“Abbott and McCausland wanted to redefine documentary photography’s function by examining transformation through the lens of a rapidly moderniizing New York City. Instead, their publisher diluted their message, producing a tourist guidebook for visitors to the 1939 New York World’s Fair,” explained Jessica Rosen, Curatorial Assistant, who organized the exhibition. Embracing the Parallax offers a new understanding of the women’s partnership by reuniting several of Abbott’s photographs with portions of McCausland’s original text.

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The word parallax refers to an optical phenomenon where the position of an object appears to shift when observed from different viewpoints–whether it be a shift between the camera’s viewfinder and lens, or a shift in one’s perspective.

Rather than simply documenting the modernization from the perspective of aesthetic shifts, Abbott and McCausland intended to capture the invisible social, economic, and political factors that catalyzed these changes in the build environment. They believed that documentary photography wasw a tool to initiate dialogue and foster civic responsibility.

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“We cannot go on just looking at things on the surface,” Abbott said. “Real things today are conflict, contradictions, warfaare, unbalance, lack of order, lack of reason–contrasts in a rapidly changing civilization.”

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Abbott and McCausland’s philosophy demands that we relearn how to see.

As part of the Heckscher’s 2025 Pride Initiative, this exhibition raises questions about the politics of visibility and invisibility by examining Abbott’s and McCauseland’s intellectual partnership and r0mantic relationship. Abbott and McCauland’s collaborative projects demonstrate how documentary photography can be used as a tool to foster civic responsibility by exposing the invisible factors that shape our world.

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Images

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898 – 1991), Tri-Boro Barber School, 1935, Gelativ silver print. Gift of Morton Brozinsky.

Berenic Abbott (American, 1898 – 1991), Parallax (Candles), 1951, Gelativ silver print. Gift of Mr. Morton Brozinsky.

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Sponsored by Susan Van Scoy, Ph.D., Brian Katz & Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP.
This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

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The Heckscher Museum of Art

The Heckscher Museum of Art is in its second century as a source of art and inspiration on Long Island. Founded by philanthropists Anna and August Heckscher in 1920, the Museum’s collection comprises 2,300 artworks spanning the nineteenth century to the present. The Museum is committed to growing the collection to develop public awareness for the artists whose careers and life experiences can broaden our understaning of the past, foster community connection to the present, and create diverse possibilities for the future. Located in scenic Heckscher Park in Huntington, the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Continuing the legacy of the founders, free admission to the Museum for 2025 is supported through a generous grant from Bank of American.