Self-portrait distortion

As a photographer, Abbott had a unique approach to the possibilities of the camera. Her desire to unearth the potential results of photography furthered by science was exhaustive. From 1939 when she first began to write on the subject, she educated herself in a little-explored field where women were virtually unheard of. Her desire led to several experimental processes, invention of gadgets and equipment design. With fellow photographer Harold Edgerton, she worked at MIT with the Physical Science Study Committee to work on her method called Projection Photography in which the object being photographed was enlarged instead of the negative, lending to stronger definition of the image. In 1940 she designed the Distortion Easel for which she received a patent. It was to be used in the darkroom to distort any image in a humorous way. This self-portrait was the first image she made with the device, combining her love of photography ameliorated by science. A variant of this image was used in an advertisement for the invention. (see: O'Neal, Berenice Abbott: American Photographer, p. 25 for a reproduction). In 1944 she became the photography editor at Science Illustrated and perservered, though not always successfully, in the field of scientific photography for several decades afterwards.