“So Easy to See”: Berenice Abbott’s Super Sight Photography

In the early 1940s Berenice Abbott developed a method of direct image capture resulting in large photographic prints that are astonishing in their clarity, detail and transparency even today.

Abbott had aspirations that her process, which she called Super Sight, would be transformative in the photography of science. Today, her Super Sight prints are recognized as possibly the most successful realization of her career-long quest for photographic realism.

Join us for a roundtable discussion of Abbott’s Super Sight with participants Julia Van Haaften, retired founding curator of photography at the New York Public Library and Abbott’s biographer, and Professor Rowena Kennedy-Epstein of the University of Bristol, author of a study of the poet and science biographer Muriel Rukeyser, who collaborated with Abbott on Super Sight. The discussion will be moderated by MIT Museum’s Gary Van Zante, curator of the Museum’s exhibition on Abbott’s Super Sight currently on view in the Kurtz Gallery through March 2024.

December 12, 2023
6:30-8:30pm
$15 General Public
$5 MIT ID holders

Seating is Limited. Advance registration is highly recommended.

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Be sure to visit our exhibition So Easy to See: Berenice Abbott's Super Sight on view in the Ronald A. (1954) and Carol S. Kurtz Photography Gallery.

Panelists