Super Sight (NYPL): Berenice Abbott and Muriel Rukeyser's Lost Collaboration

In the 1940s, American photographer Berenice Abbott developed the Super Sight camera: a pioneering device that captured precise close-up images in striking detail. Using it, Abbott turned its lens on simple, everyday objects a hand, a bird s wing, an apple, a walnut creating large-format, black-and-white photographs.

Abbott began to collaborate with the renowned writer Muriel Rukeyser on a project that would pair Abbott's Super Sight photographs with Rukeyser's texts. Together, the photos and writing explore the intersections of art, science, gender, sexuality, and perception, resulting in a compelling collaboration well ahead of its time. For years, the pair sought to publish their project, but faced repeated rejection from the primarily male cultural gatekeepers of the era.

Accompanying a major exhibition at The New York Public Library, Super Sight is the long-overdue publication of Abbott and Rukeyser s project. This compelling book presents all of Abbott s known Super Sight photographs, alongside Rukeyser s original introduction to their joint project, and handwritten ephemera. Super Sight also showcases never-before-seen archival materials and new scholarship, including by the pre-eminent Rukeyser expert, Rowena Kennedy-Epstein.

Visually stunning and intellectually exciting, this volume at last allows contemporary art and photography enthusiasts the opportunity to explore a historic collaboration by two of the twentieth century s most forward-thinking creative minds.