Part 1 of 4: Berenice Abbott
Learning to See the World Again
In the weeks leading up to Ambiguous Boundaries, an upcoming exhibition hosted by Mark Rengers Gallery at the First National Bank Exhibition Hall in Sewickley, this series begins not with the artists on view, but with a question.
How do we learn to see?
The exhibition, opening April 3, brings together the work of Christine Lorenz and Kristen Letts Kovak, two artists whose practices ask us to slow down, to look more closely, and to reconsider the relationship between perception and reality.
But before we arrive there, it is worth stepping back.
Because the way these artists see the world did not emerge in isolation. It exists within a longer tradition, one shaped by artists who believed that images could do more than represent the world. They could help us understand it.
When asked about influence, Christine Lorenz did not hesitate. One of the first names she returned to was Berenice Abbott.
That instinct offers a place to begin.
Abbott’s work provides a foundation for understanding not only Lorenz’s practice, but the larger question this exhibition explores. She approached photography not simply as an art form, but as a way of making sense of reality itself.
She is often remembered for her photographs of New York City in the early twentieth century, capturing a rapidly changing urban landscape with clarity and precision. But her work did not stop at documentation.
Over time, Abbott became deeply engaged with science.
She began creating what she called science photographs, images designed to visualize physical principles such as magnetism, wave motion, and light. These were not abstract ideas illustrated through drawing or interpretation. They were real phenomena, carefully constructed and photographed so that they could be seen and understood.
Her belief was direct.
Photography could reveal truth.
Not truth as opinion, but truth grounded in the physical world. A photograph could make visible what would otherwise remain invisible. It could bridge the gap between knowledge and perception.
To Abbott, seeing was not passive.
It was something that could be learned.
Something that could be sharpened.
Something that could change the way we understand the world around us.
This idea sits at the center of the exhibition this series is leading toward.
Because in the work of Christine Lorenz, we encounter a contemporary extension of that same impulse. Her photographs do not document cities or scientific experiments, but they operate with a similar intention. They ask what happens when we look more closely. When scale shifts. When the familiar becomes unfamiliar.
A grain of salt becomes a landscape. A fragment of plastic becomes a field of light.
What Abbott explored through scientific phenomena, Lorenz explores through material.
Both are concerned with the same fundamental question.
What does it mean to truly see something?
And what happens when we realize that our first impression was only the beginning?
This is the thread that will carry through the series.
From Abbott’s exploration of photography as a tool for understanding, to Lorenz’s investigation of scale and perception, and ultimately to the work of Kristen Letts Kovak, whose practice engages with material and meaning in a different but equally resonant way.
Each step brings us closer to the exhibition.
But more importantly, each step offers a different way of looking.
Because the goal here is not simply to introduce artists or explain their work.
It is to create a space, however briefly, where we can pause long enough to see something differently.
Abbott understood that this kind of seeing requires effort.
It requires attention.
And perhaps most importantly, it requires time.
This series, presented in the lead-up to the exhibition hosted by Mark Rengers Gallery, is an invitation to begin that process.
Resources
Berenice Abbott
Abbott’s work spans documentary photography and scientific imagery, with a lasting impact on how photography can be used as a tool for understanding the physical world.Changing New York
A landmark project documenting New York City during a period of rapid transformation, reflecting Abbott’s commitment to clarity, structure, and observation.The Attractive Universe
A collection of Abbott’s science photographs illustrating physical principles such as magnetism, motion, and light.Mark Rengers Gallery
For more information on current and upcoming exhibitions, please visit the gallery’s website.