The Museum of the City of New York holds the essential source materials for any study of Berenice Abbott's Changing New York. The collection contains 700 negatives, 353 proof prints, 941 unmounted prints, the files completed by the project's researchers, and two sets of 305 mounted exhibition prints, which represent Abbott's final selection for the project and comprise the plates in this book. Several other sources proved invaluable for the preparation of this catalogue: Abbott's New York photographs of 1929 to 1935, which belong to Commerce Graphics, Ltd, Inc.; memoranda prepared in 1994-95 by this project's research associate Peter Simmons, which trace the history of Abbott's sites since the 1930s and locate the sites on 1934 New York City plot maps; and re-photography of Abbott's sites in 1994-95 by students in the MFA Photography and Related Media Program, School of Visual Arts. Also useful in understanding Abbott's intentions are her recollections recorded in an extensive interview by Jim McQuaid and David Tait and by Hank O'Neal in his seminal book, Berenice Abbott, American Photographer (1982.)(1)

Although Abbott did not organize Changing New York geographically, this book is divided into eight geographic sections, following the approach of the 1939 WPA Guide to New York City : Wall Street, City Hall, and South Street Districts; Lower East Side; Lower West Side; Greenwich Village; Middle West Side; Middle East Side; North of 59th Street; and Outer Boroughs. Each of the book's 305 plates has been assigned a number by geographic section, so that DePeyster Statue, Bowling Green, for example, is Wall Street 1. Each catalogue entry discusses a plate or a series of related plates and begins with basic information about the image or images: its title and address; the date Abbott exposed the negative; and the Abbott file number, which the researchers assigned chronologically, or roughly so, as Abbott gave them new proofs. An asterisk (*) next to a title indicates that the image was published in the 1939 Dutton edition of Changing New York.

The entries are often accompanied by illustrations of related Abbott photographs, which represent variant images, discarded images, or images of the same subject taken prior to the Federal Art Project. A variant image is a modern print (made in 1991) from a negative that Abbott exposed the same day as the plate, but chose not to print. For example, the entry for "Theoline," shows two variants, one of which was taken from a different vantage point and the other from the same position as the plate but with a different lens. Discarded images are prints that Abbott gave to the researchers but later excluded from the project. The Greyhound Bus Terminal entry, for example, shows two discarded images of nearby Pennsylvania Station which Abbott photographed the same day as the terminal. The researchers completed a file on the station before Abbott decided to reject the image from the project. Several entries include a map or drawing taken from the research files.

1 Jim McQuaid and David Tait, "Interview with Berenice Abbott," July 1975, on deposit at the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, N.Y.

Hank O'Neal with introduction by John Canaday and commentary by Berenice Abbott, Berenice Abbott, Photographer, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1982.

These texts are noted in the entries as McQuaid and O'Neal.

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