ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the work of three such women – photographers Berenice Abbott and Ruth Bernhard and painter Nell Blaine – in relation to their use of formalist styles and normative subjects that resisted intimate forms of personal self-revelation and thereby averted both gendered and homophobic stereotyping. The term "lesbian" was widely associated with social opprobrium throughout most of the twentieth century and was rarely used by middle- or upper-class women to describe themselves or their romantic partners and friends. Berenice Abbott gained attention in American photographic circles in the 1930s through her dramatic, inventively composed images recording the unprecedented architectural changes taking place as New York City was modernized during that decade; a selection of these photographs was published in her 1939 book titled Changing New York. Ruth Bernhard's career reveals just the opposite international trajectory. The life histories of Berenice Abbott, Ruth Bernhard, and Nell Blaine offer evidence of lesbian identities asserted through long-term relationships with other women.
