All photography is documentary by nature.
Berenice Abbott tried several artistic paths before she found her real strength. Her first inclination was to become a journalist, and she entered Ohio State University in 1917 to learn how to do it. College study wasn't exactly what she had in mind, so she left a year later for the bohemian adventures of New York's Greenwich Village. In New York, Berenice met director Jimmy Light, the man she would marry, and the two were active participants in the productions of the city's Provincetown Playhouse. While working at part-time jobs and appearing in the occasional play, she turned to sculpture as her next artistic experiment and soon began hobnobbing with avant garde artists and writers of the period including Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Djuna Barnes .