American photographer Berenice Abbott was BOTD in 1898. Born Bernice Abbott in Springfield, Ohio, she studied journalism at Ohio State University, relocating to New York City in 1918 to study sculpture and painting. She moved to Paris in 1921, studying at the Académie de la Grand Chaumière and changing her name to “Berenice” at the suggestion of her friend Djuna Barnes. In 1923, she worked as an assistant for photographer Man Ray, socialising with and photographing a literary and artistic milieu including James Joyce, Jean Cocteau, Sylvia Beach and Eugène Atget. After a short period studying at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin, she returned to Paris in 1927, opening her own photography studio. After Atget’s death, she purchased his back catalogue of photographs and negatives and arranging for their publication. In 1929, she visited New York with the intention of finding a publisher for a Atget’s photographs. Struck by the rapid growth of the city, she closed her studio in Paris and relocated to New York. For the next six years, she documented the city’s transformation into a modernist metropolis, supporting herself with commercial work and teaching at the New School of Social Research. Her resulting book Changing New York (1935-1938), accompanied by a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, was critically acclaimed, establishing her as one of the leading urban photographers of the post-war period. She remained in New York for the rest of her life, sharing an apartment with her partner Elizabeth McCausland for 30 years, and mentored the early career of Diane Arbus. In later life, she became interested in scientific photography, producing stroboscopic images of moving objects for high school physics textbooks. After McCausland’s death in 1965, Abbott moved to Blanchard in Maine, living there until her death in 1991, aged 93.