As a leadup to the New New York 6 exhibition of images documenting the city in transition, The Architectural League NY is presenting a lecture by curator and historian Bonnie Yochelson about Berenice Abbott's landmark photo project of the 1930s.

Having made a name for herself in photography after spending a decade in Paris, Abbott returned to New York in 1929. Even during the Great Depression, the city was in the midst of a building boom, in which both the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center went up. Funded by the Federal Art Project and the fledgling Museum of the City of New York, she created the Changing New York portfolio of 305 photographs. The photographs were ultimately published as a guidebook for visitors to the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Three images from Changing New York by Berenice Abbott: Waterfront, South Street, Manhattan. (October 15, 1935); General view looking south from Bignou Gallery, 18th floor, 32 East 57th Street, Manhattan. (January 27, 1937); Broome Street no. 512-514, Manhattan. (October 07, 1935). Courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery.

When asked in 1940 by Popular Photography magazine to describe her favorite picture, Abbott responded, "Suppose we took a thousand negatives and made a gigantic montage; a myriad-faceted picture combining the elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad faces, the triumphant faces, the power, the irony, the strength, the decay, the past, the present, the future of a city - that would be my favorite picture."

New New York 6 will offer a new picture of the great Metropolis from the point of view of The New New York Photography Corps - people at the center of urban planning and design issues. It will explore the full scope of design and planning in New York over the last decade, considering how the policies and priorities of the Bloomberg administration, a frenzied economy, and an increasing interest among the general public in architecture and design combined to dramatically transform the shape of the city.

The New New York Photography Corps is a team of architects and members of related professions who have served as volunteer photographers to document changes in the city following the recent building boom. Loosely conceived along the lines of the WPA artists' and writers' projects of the 1930s, the New New York Photography Corps has provided the primary visual material around which the New New York 6 exhibition is being organized. The group was organized by the League in collaboration with the Esto photography agency.

Berenice Abbott's Changing New York: A lecture by Bonnie Yochelson. Presented by The Architectural League NY on Friday, March 19, 7:00 p.m. Rose Auditorium, 41 Cooper Square, New York, NY. Note: This event takes place in Cooper Union's new academic building designed by Thom Mayne of the Los Angeles architectural firm Morphosis.

Tickets are free for League and NNY Photo Corps members; $10 for non-members. Members may reserve a ticket by e-mailing: rsvp@archleague.org. Non-members may purchase tickets here until six hours before the program start. Purchased tickets are available for pick-up at the venue check-in desk and are non-refundable

Bonnie Yochelson, formerly Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, is currently an independent curator and art historian. Her latest project is Alfred Stieglitz New York, an exhibition that will open September 2010 at the South Street Seaport Museum. She has written extensively on photography, including: Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn of the Century New York; Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, The Complete WPA Project; New York to Hollywood: The Photography of Karl Struss, and Pictorialism into Modernism: The Clarence H. White School of Photography. She teaches the history of photography in the MFA Program in Photography, Video and Related Media at the School of Visual Arts, New York.

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