Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) Parabolic Mirror, c. 1958 Gelatin silver print; signed in ink on the image, flush-mounted, signed in pencil on the reverse. 10 x 7 in. (25.4 x 17.8 cm.) Footnotes: Provenance Swann Galleries New York, 7 October 1997, Sale 1767, Lot 123 Acquired from the above by the present owner Literature Hank O'Neal and Berenice Abbott, Berenice Abbott: American Photographer (New York, 1982), p. 215 Berenice Abbott (New York, 1988), inside cover Berenice Abbott: Documenting Science (Göttingen, 2012), p. 97 Gaëlle Morel, Berenice Abbott (Paris: Jeu de Paume, 2012), p. 163 Note In addition to her 1930s project 'Changing New York', Berenice Abbott explored a wide range of subjects during her long career, with a particular interest in scientific photography. During the Cold War era, Abbott contributed many scientific images towards the promotion of U.S. national interests as well as to champion reforms in scientific education. To these ends, Abbott built her own cameras that allowed her to experiment with a technique she called 'Super Sight', with which she successfully produced large-format photographs of scientific phenomena that exhibited remarkable clarity and definition. Her scientific work culminated between 1958 and 1961 when she collaborated with the Physical Sciences Study Committee (PSSC) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With the goal of devising a new high school science curriculum, the PSSC recognized that Abbott's scientific imagery was critical to their agenda and understood that capturing scientific principles on film was just as important as explaining them on paper. Not only were Abbott's resulting images featured in physics textbooks in the late 1950s and '60s, but they remain important references used today to convey concepts of modern physics and scientific methodology. In creating this image of a woman's eye reflected in a parabolic mirror, Abbott explains: 'This is one of the most difficult photographs I ever took. Each of the scientific photographs was different, different in its own peculiar way, and there was usually no precedent to go by. The interesting thing about this photograph is the huge background it required - perhaps fifteen feet. First I photographed the eye, enlarged it and mounted it on a piece of cardboard. Then I positioned it so the camera would be at precisely the right angle to catch the reflection of the eye in each of the small mirrors mounted on the concave surface. 'A long exposure was necessary because of an additional problem. I was very fond of the homely little devices the scientists came up with for my experiments, and so I broke my neck to get the base of the stand in the photograph. I lay awake at night trying to figure out a way to get it in the picture. Finally I did something I never did before and never have since, and used an elaborate raised back swing that enabled me to include the stand, improving the composition.' (Berenice Abbott: American Photographer, p. 215). Vintage prints of 'Parabolic Mirror' are exceedingly scarce. At the time of this writing, fewer than five early prints of this image have been known to come to market. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing