Berenice Abbott and Zoe Strauss

Zoe Strauss
Star, 2005

My artist is Berenice Abbott. I am helping make a documentary about Zoe Strauss, another artist. When I compared the two of them together, I first found out the most obvious thing they have in common - photography. But really, they have some similarities and differences. In particular, I noticed that Zoe and Abbott took almost the same kinds of pictures. Zoes takes pictures of sayings and words, landscapes, and portraits of herself and other people. Abbott does the same things, but looks at things a little bit differently. Abbott might look at a building on a street, a shop window, or a clock and just see human faces. Another similarity is that Zoe and Abbott is that they take most of their pictures in their hometown or where they grew up. Also, I noticed that Zoe Strauss and Berenice Abbott both record everyday happenings.

Two pictures that I want to focus on are Zoe's picture of the lighted outline of a star, and Abbott's picture of downtown Manhattan at night. I love this photobecause I love the way New York looks at night. One thing I can say about these photos is the fact that they are both focused on lines, shapes, angles, and light. It looks to me like both of the pictures were taken at night. I love the star picture because you see the darkness surrounding the star, then the outline of the star, and then inside the star it is dark again. The use of light and contrast in these photos made me focus more on what was lit than what was dark.

Zoe's photo was in a direct approach by just snapping a photo of the star, but Abbott took the picture at sort of an angle. In Zoe's and Abbott's pictures they both use negative and positive spaces, but Zoe's used a lot more negative space to allow you to focus more on the star. Abbott's has much less negative space so that you can focus on the whole photo.