Magnetic Field

Abbott straddles many sub-disciplines of photography, including society portraits from 1920s Paris and urban photography from 1930s New York City. Abbott’s commitment to photographing scientific phenomena is less widely known, but no less important to photography’s history.

MIT hired Abbott in 1958 to produce photo illustrations for a new physics book. So luscious and surreal were the results that they were featured in magazines of the time and considered alongside current events such as the launch of the Sputnik satellite. These works include images of water rippling, parabolic mirrors, balls moving through space, and—seen here—magnets attracting. They are rigorously scientific, yet the anthropomorphic aspect is rooted in Abbott’s Surrealist roots. To create these unprecedented images, she developed an enormous photographic apparatus, which she called “Super Sight.”