She tirelessly promoted his work for more than forty years. As collector and guardian of Eugène Atget photographic archive, Abbott performed her most significant task in preserving the legacy of this early modern photographer.Her ability to capture scientific subjects and endow them with popular appeal and scientific correctness enabled her to make physics visually comprehensible. She accomplished this task through her photo book on Changing New York that summarized the city's modern transformation, and her science photography. Abbott identified how photography, in particular science photography, could act as a friendly interpreter of the world to laymen and women.In her own words, straight photography is: "precision in the rendering and definition of detail and materials, surfaces and textures instantaneity of observation acute and faithful presentation of what has actually existed in the external world at a particular time and place." For Abbott, the photographic image had to be honest, contingent, and objective to be communicative.The resulting book Changing New York (1935-1938) received critical acclaim and has continued to resonate to this day. After eight years in Paris, Abbott moved to New York in 1929 to document the modern transformation of the city. Abbott's realist approach to photography stems from her career as a portrait photographer in Paris as well as the influence of Eugène Atget's photographic realism. Her photographs purposely facilitated the interaction and dialogue between the photographer, the photographic print, and the viewer. She pursued a realist vision in recording history and her own historical experience in order to potentially affect change in her audience. Berenice Abbott was an American photographer known for her portraits and documentary photographs which stressed the communicative, even educational value of the photographic print.