Portrait of James Joyce in Paris

This portrait of one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century is by one of that century’s greatest photographers. Beginning in 1923, Berenice Abbott worked as a studio assistant to the Dada Surrealist Man Ray, but by the mid-1920s she had developed her own empathetic documentary style of portraiture, which sought to capture the sitter’s personality. Abbott made this portrait in 1928, shortly before she returned from Paris to New York to photograph the city during the Great Depression. Although Abbott was unable to afford to buy a copy of Ulysses when it was first published, her biographer Julia Van Haaften records that she read the novel at least three times, commenting: “Why bother to read anything else?”