Tempo of the City I

About this Brooklyn Icon

The Brooklyn Museum is commemorating its 200th anniversary by spotlighting 200 standout objects in its encyclopedic collection.

This black-and-white photograph is a treasured memory of 1930s New York by Berenice Abbott, one of the greatest documentary photographers of her time. It was taken on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street in Manhattan on a spring day in 1938, capturing in an instant both the solidity of the city’s buildings, darker in the background, and its restlessness at street level. The photograph is particularly striking because of the perspective from above: a high-angle shot that enhances the crowd’s movement and feeling of urban frenzy; the photographer is closest to the dominating clock, infusing the image with a cinematic intensity.

Tempo of the City I was part of Abbott’s larger effort, called Changing New York, to document the city during the Great Depression, a time when hundreds of 19th-century buildings were being rapidly demolished and replaced by skyscrapers. The series was supported in part by the Federal Art Project, a New Deal program begun in 1935, which provided Abbott with a monthly salary, an assistant, and a car (among other things). With this historic documentary series, Abbott became one of the most well-known American photographers.