Known for her seminal project Changing New York, documenting the devastating economic crisis of the 1930s, the American photographer Berenice Abbott’s groundbreaking scientific photography is oftentimes overlooked. As one of the great photographers of the twentieth century, Abbott turned her attention to scientific subject matter, convinced of the potential of the medium to make the seemingly mysterious accessible. Abbott’s manifesto, Photography and Science, dated April 24, 1939, declares her calling that would define her artistic trajectory for the next two decades:

“We live in a world made by science. But we – the millions of laymen – do not understand or appreciate the knowledge which thus controls daily life.

To obtain wide popular support for science, to that end that we may explore this vast subject even further and bring as yet unexplored areas under control, there needs to be a friendly interpreter between science and the layman.

I believe that photography can be this spokesman, as no other form of expression can be; for photography, the art of our time, the mechanical, scientific medium which matches the pace and character of our era, is attuned to the function. There is an essential unity between photography, science’s child, and science, the parent.

Yet so far the task of photographing scientific subjects and endowing them with popular appeal and scientific correctness has not been mastered. The function of the artist is needed here, as well as the function of the recorder. The artist through history has been the spokesman and conservator of human and spiritual energies and ideas. Today science needs its voice. It needs the vivification of the visual image, the warm human quality of imagination added to its austere and stern disciplines. It needs to speak to the people in terms they will understand. They can understand photography preeminently.

To me, this function of photography seems extraordinarily urgent and exciting. Scientific subject matter may well be the most thrilling of today. My hope of moving into this new field comes logically in my own evolution as a photographer.

After I had explored the possibilities of portrait photography in Paris for some years, I set myself the task of documenting New York City. Now after ten years of work at this interpretation, I find this phase of my career rounded out with the publication of my book, Changing New York.

The problem of documenting science, of presenting its realistic subject matter with the same integrity as one portrays the culture morphology of our civilization, and yet of endowing this material so strange and unfamiliar to the public with the poetry of its own vast implications, would seem to me to lead logically from my previous experience.

I am now seeking channels through which this new creative task may be approached.”

It was not until the late 1950s - as the Cold War’s emphasis on scientific research in the United States increased - when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hired Abbott to create new photographic images in support of the teaching of physics. Thanks to the launch of Sputnik and the ensuing Space Race, federal interest in physics was suddenly met with a certain urgency. Abbott’s breakthrough came in 1958, when she told MIT’s Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) “that scientists were the worst photographers in the world. They need the best – and I was the one.” During her two years at MIT, Abbott created photographs documenting the principles of physical science such as mechanisms, electromagnetism, and waves.

The photographs taken at MIT were to illustrate a new physics textbook to be used by millions of high school students. Not only were phenomena such as acceleration due to gravity, wave interference, and magnetism accurately revealed; abstract concepts such as energy conservation and the inexorable increase of entropy or disorder were also promulgated. Each striking image draws on Abbott’s mastery of lighting, composition, and timing to bring the underlying physics into focus, while simultaneously creating a visual poetry of arcs, staccato imprints, and refined varied patterns.

Physics, high school textbook, first published in 1960, featuring Abbott’s photographs.

As a collaborative artist, Abbott with her potent force of her imagination to illustrate, was the perfect participant to inspire scientists, whom she viewed as fellow creators, grounded in reality, but ready to make leaps of discovery. Convinced of photography’s unique capability to give science its voice, Abbott inspired a generation of scientists while her iconic images are still relevant to physics education today.

Abbott was also an inventor who held a number of patents for photography-related inventions. For her science photos, she devised a new type of camera called SuperSight. This camera functions precisely as the opposite of a camera obscura: a small field comes through the camera and is projected very large directly onto film, producing a detailed grain-free image, inside the camera. The 1945 photograph of soap bubbles, part of this portfolio, was created through this process.

A stylish, confident and beautiful young woman whose looks and androgynous style were in tune with the times, Abbott took up photography by accident, encouraged by Man Ray. She posed for him in 1921 and, soon after, became his assistant. Impressed by her instinctive ability, he allowed her to use his darkroom to develop her own work. Initially funded by Peggy Guggenheim, the American socialite and art-lover, Abbott founded her own studio where her sitters included Jean Cocteau, André Gide, and James Joyce. Throughout her long career spanning the entire 20th century, Abbott’s ability to innovate and her eagerness never faded: “I am so fascinated with this century, it will help keep me alive. I’ll be there until the last minute, fighting.”