Out of the archive: Berenice Abbott's changing New York and the carry-all coat

This text reflects on how inclusions and exclusions of artefacts within archives influence art historical narrative. The potential of the artist’s archive is examined as a resource for the making of new works that reference an earlier time, yet have resonance in the contemporary context. In particular, experience of the archive of American photographer Berenice Abbott is analysed here, as impetus for the making of recent exhibits and publications. The co-authored Censored Realities/Changing New York, Camera Austria, 2018 by Alice Maude-Roxby and Stefanie Seibold brought into circulation for the first-time, captions written by Berenice Abbott’s partner, Elizabeth McCausland. These writings by McCausland had been intended to accompany Abbott’s photographs within the Dutton publication of Changing New York in 1939 but were deemed unsuitable by the publishers. Also inspired by the archive, the processes inherent in the fabrication of a prototype based on one of Berenice Abbott’s House of Photography inventions, the Kit-Jak coat, are considered here within the context of the Resist: be modern (again) exhibition curated by Maude-Roxby and Seibold, and on display at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton in 2019.