Credit: James Joyce, Île-de-France, Paris 1928; Berenice Abbott Collection, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History
This photo of Joyce was taken by Berenice Abbott six years after Ulysses was published. During the 1920s, she was one of the premier portrait photographers of Paris. One of the critical elements of Abbott’s portraiture was a desire to neither enhance nor interfere with the sitter; she wanted the personality of her subject to dictate the form of the photograph.