Atget

Atget
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a new way of looking and seeing

Honoring Memories of an Important Pioneering Photographic Artist

*The* Atget book to get

love as light

"Being Eugene Atget"

Atget
John Szarkowski
Manufacturer: The Museum of Modern Art, New York
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Friedlander

ASIN: 0870700944
Release Date: 2004-02-02

Amazon.com

In this day and age, we've pretty much taken photography for granted as an integral part of everyday life. There is the immediacy of Polaroids and the limitlessness of disposable cameras, which make a picture taken today a distant cousin to the practice of early photography. Occasionally we need reminding of the roots of photographic image-making, the glass plates, hand-coated emulsion, and massive amounts of other accouterments that were needed to make one image. In Atget, a selection from the lifetime work of legendary French photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927), we enter the world of early-20th-century photography, which was beginning to bid farewell to the handcrafted picture.

Atget was poised on the cusp between the techniques and materials of early photography and the moment things began to change and modern photography was born. From a laborious and time-consuming process came a much faster method that changed the nature of photography forever. Seemingly overnight, the photograph went from being a precious object to something on its way to being accessible to all. Atget was among the first generation to photographically capture the world of ordinary citizens. While the subject matter was new, he was nevertheless steeped in the tradition of the old-world photograph. A crooked door knocker is captured with loving attention to detail, an air of preciousness still present. Spindly trees, store windows, public gardens--each picture is delicate and romantic. It makes you wonder if absolutely everything was more beautiful in France. Included in the book are insightful commentaries for each of the 100 tritone photographs and five duotones, plus a great introduction by John Szarkowski, former director of the Department of Photography at the MOMA. --J.P. Cohen

Book Description

This superbly reproduced volume presents the essence of the work of the great French photographer, EugAne Atget, in 100 carefully selected photographs. John Szarkowski, an acknowledged master of the art of looking at photographs, explores in this book the unique sensibilities that made Atget one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century and a vital influence on the development of modern and contemporary photography. Szarkowski's eloquent introductory text and commentaries form an extended essay on the remarkable visual intelligence displayed in these subtle, sometimes enigmatic pictures.

Customer Reviews:

a new way of looking and seeing.......2007-08-16

if you are looking at a way to make the ordinary special, looking at the images contained in Atget definitely intrigues your imagination. details and compostion place the viewer in the scene, an active particpant.

Honoring Memories of an Important Pioneering Photographic Artist.......2006-03-20

Eugene Atget is known to everyone, perhaps not by name in all instances, but at least by the images of Paris and environs that grace all manner of books, essays, brochures, museums, art collections, and postcards throughout the world. At the time of his death in 1927 his enormous output of images was archived and has subsequently been studied, purchased and shared with exhibitions too numerous to mention. Yet in this fine book the essence of Atget the observer is appreciated as well as any publication of the many about the pioneering photographer, a man who served as an important bridge from studio formality of the art to entering the human realm of images of people on the streets of Paris and the surrounding areas.

Each of the 100 tritone and 5 duotone photographs in this elegant volume is accompanied by an insightful comment by the superb writer John Szarkowski who also happens to be the former director of the Department of Photography at the MOMA in New York. Rarely have photographic images been so enhanced by the written word: Szarkowski is in complete synchrony with the vision of Atget. Here are images of simple people of early 20th century Paris, images of streets, still lifes, woods, streams, rivers great and small, each captured with immediacy and yet with timelessness.

For those looking for an affordable introduction of Atget's work for the library, this is certainly the volume of choice. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, March 06

*The* Atget book to get.......2002-05-06

Now that it is so cheap, don't miss this great book! Excellent prose by Szarkowski and beautiful pictures by a master... hard combination to beat.

love as light.......2001-12-31

Again, John Szarkowski takes us by the hand and leads us into the photographs of Eugene Atget, as through the magic of a looking glass. In these writings, on a selection of photographs from the first quarter of the 20th century, in his historically aware and individual way, Szarkowski instructs on how to read a photograph by doing so himself. We not only see into the environs of Paris through the eyes of the eclectic, determined and tender Atget, but also through the eyes and the keen, attentive mind of Szarkowski, who writes as though he lives inside these pictures, and tends them, and the photographer, with great devotion.

This edition is set up by the previous 4 volume study, The Work of Atget, by Maria Morris Hambourg and John Szarkowski, Museum of Modern Art, 1985. But this new book comes from a persistent, deep seam miner, one who knows that what it is about these photographs is so fertile, they can be studied throughout one's life, and still give more.

How rich is the mind that can bring another mind to light? Would it be bearable if everything in life could be keyed into focus, for us too busy and bothered to pay attention, by a poet as revelatory as Szarkowski? When considering entree des jardins, 1921-22, he says, "except occasionally, as (for example) during revolutions, the French have managed very well to sublimate the periodic human tendency to behave violently toward one's fellow human men, and have directed these impulses toward their trees", you cannot help but love the gardener who built the gate here, the photographer for seeing it, and Szarkowski, for bringing it to our attention in this way. He tells you what is on the menu, who lived in the house, how the hotel got its name, who built it, what may have motivated them to sculpt a Dionysus over a doorway, what member of the court of Louis the XIV was cast to live where, what other photographer may have attempted to photograph the same scene, and sometimes, what led Atget there.

The book is a beautiful masterpiece, and an accomplishment worthy of a life spent looking deeply. If you love (really looking at) photographs, you should consider your shelves incomplete without it.

"Being Eugene Atget".......2001-12-13

This book is another gift from a great writer and observer, an homage to Atget, to photography, to art and to Western civilization. For anyone who pretends to be a photographer or to love Art, it is a joy to share Szarkowski's easy erudition, one or two pages at a time.

Atget showed us the axioms of photography and axioms cannot be explained by analysis. The test of an Atget, Bach, or Cezanne, is that it is impossible to find the source of their revelation and impossible not to find their influence in future artists.

"Good pictures are not explained by words...With exceptional good luck criticism might with words construct meanings that are different from but consonant with the meanings of pictures. Such constructs of words might possibly guide us toward the neighborhoods where pictorial meanings live.", he says in this book. (Please, if you are an art historian or critic, take this pledge!)

Thus Szarkowski tours the photographs he has selected and writes a thought or two somehow connected to each one - sometimes a revelation, often a question. Each page of writing stands alone and will engage the reader in a conversation with the author and the photographer. Many times Szarkowski puts us somewhere behind the camera a hundred years ago, or on a bridge in Paris 600 years ago. He really brings Atget to life by putting us in his time and place.

There are plenty of revealing facts stashed throughout the writing. Szarkowski talks of the influence of Atget on Weston, Walker Evans, Winogrand, and others and leaves us to recognize the Atget in Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, and ourselves. He mentions just the relevant technical and biographical details.

He shows examples of how Atget handled Time,the essence of photography. As he wrote in "Photography Until Now" about Atget, "Perhaps from the practice of looking attentively and repeatedly at the same thing from different vantage points and in different lights he came to see that ...one tree, or one reflecting pool, was never twice the same, and would therefore last as a subject as long as one's concentrated attention. With this realization he became, surely not intentionally, a modern artist."

The reflecting pools and trees are in this book along with the more familiar Parisian architecture. Different views of the same subjects are also in other books such as Berenice Abbott's "The World Of Atget". Szarkowski thus, enriches the literature on Atget, giving meaning to many of the published mindless catalogs of his photographs.

Szarkowski shows another reason Atget is a modern artist. His work is meticulously constructed in the same cultural elements as the works of his more famous contemporary French painters and sculptures. There are no accidents and no mistakes in his work. The result is a richness that reveals something new every time we look at it.

The same is true of this book by Szarkowsi. I've read it three times. It is a masterpiece, "...seductively and deceptively simple, wholly poised, reticent, dense with experience, mysterious and true." To use the words Szarkowski wrote of Atget in Looking At Photographs.

Eugene Atget: Unknown Paris
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Unknown Paris

"Unknown Paris" Review

Eugene Atget: Unknown Paris
David Harris
Manufacturer: New Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Atget: Paris in Detail

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Atget Atget

ASIN: 1565848683

Book Description

Over 200 never-before-published photographs from one of the twentieth century's most innovative photographers.

Atget reached the pole of utmost mastery; but with the bitter modesty of a great craftsman who always lives in the shadows, he neglected to plant his flag there. Therefore many are able to flatter themselves that they have discovered the pole, even though Atget was there before them.—Walter Benjamin

For 30 years, Eugène Atget photographed the historic core of Paris, its buildings and monuments, its ancient streets and civic spaces, its public parks and gardens. With the exception of his earliest photographs, he chose not to represent a particular site by a single, definitive photograph but produced sequences of interrelated images that create a cumulative portrait.

A collection of case studies of archetypal urban settings, this book examines Atget's approach to photography. It features 240 of his photographs—nearly all of which have never been published—assembled to display the integral relationship between the photographer's working method and his subject matter, revealing the character of le Vieux Paris itself.

A natural companion to the New Press's Berenice Abbott: Changing New York, Eugène Atget is the product of an exhibit mounted in response to Abbott's work and reflective of the two photographers' shared vision.

Customer Reviews:

Unknown Paris.......2005-06-14

What has already been said is wonderful, I just want to add that these are black and white photos-a lot of late 1800's Paris;no advertising on buildings, a mood of being there is created, a sense of a more sedate time is created in these photos, a slower pace is the feeling here. No modern hectic, rush, stress,get-ahead Paris that can be currently photographed. These old photos are so very well done, they are still pleasurable to view.

"Unknown Paris" Review.......2004-08-18

This book does a very good job of piecing together Atget's photography techniques and explorations. it goes deeply into the subject of Atget's "documentary" style of photography in Paris. He took many pictures of the same spaces but from different angles to achieve different effects. Full prints of his photographs constitute more than half of the book, and balance out the more lengthy explanations by David Harris. This book is organized into three main sections which make for easy navigation through its pages. The first three chapters analyze Atget's photographic style, his life as a commercial photographer, and his life at work. The bulk of the book, and the most interesting part, showcases the seven Parisian sites where he took many of his photographs. Lastly is a short conclusion and thumbnails of his photos displayed in the back of the book. Although the photographs may not be that interesting to the average person, photographers will enjoy Atget's choice of historic subjects and his dedication to documenting the city of Paris. Atget took over five thousand exposures of the city. His pictures explore the exciting subtleties of his home.

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Atget the Pioneer
Jean-Claude Lemagny , Sylvie Aubenas , Pierre Borhan , Luce Lebart , Eugene Atget , and France) Hotel De Sully (Paris
Manufacturer: Prestel
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 379132456X

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New Edition with better reproductions
wonderful pictures, but...
Thick, but of mediocre quality
The beauty and degradation of a great city...

Atget Paris
Laure Beaumont-Maillet
Manufacturer: Gingko Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 3927258075

Book Description

From 1897 until his death in 1927 Atget was photographer of Paris par excellence. This book brings together 840 of his images arranged district by district, neighborhood by neighborhood-it is the most prolific collection of his work ever published. To turn the pages is to take an unforgettable stroll through the eerie, empty streets of Paris 70 years ago. It is a strange, largely unpeopled world where objects project an uncanny density: shoes dangling in a shop window, or the milk cart laden with cans and equipped with whip and reins but no driver. This is Atget's Paris and in typical Atget style those humans that do appear are the humble tradespeople, the ragpickers, the prostitutes.

Although hailed by the surrealists for the poetic quality of his images, Atget refused to accept that he was an artist, claiming that the pictures he took were simply documents. He has become known as the first modern photographer and had the unique ability to inject a tragic quality into ordinary things. As a special tribute this book has been formatted in the shape of a Parisian cobblestone.

Customer Reviews:

New Edition with better reproductions.......2007-08-26

It appears that some reviews may be referring to previous edtions of this classic volume on Atget. The latest (2007) edition is printed and bound in a far superior volume. The photographic reproductions along with the paper and binding are both greatly improved. Highly recommended.

wonderful pictures, but..........2005-10-07

I was recommended this book by a valued friend who loved this. I can understand his opinion, Atget took lovely pictures of a world that seems beautiful in a ghostly way. People in that world weren't tall and pretty but there is photographic beauty in their pictures. And the streets always seem incredibly empty and misty and dusty. Is this really the city that was huge and vibrant already back then?

The pictures are lovely and interesting. And the book is very, very thick and contains a massive amount of Atget's photos, but the book is only about the normal pocket-book size, so when there are pages with even two pictures, the photos are bound to be small. At the same time I found a French edition of a series of French master photographers in the art-book size and it really brought up these photos better. But I got this book used through Amazon in a ridiculously low price and it's not exactly a bad edition. The pictures are on quality paper and there are so many of them that you'll spend many nights flicking through this book. It just could be bigger...

Thick, but of mediocre quality.......2003-01-05

Granted, this may be the most extensive collection of Atget's Paris work in one volume, but the quality of the photographic reproductions leaves a lot to be desired. Although not as exhaustive, Andreas Krase's "Atget's Paris" contains beautiful, high- quality reproductions of a large number of Atget's Paris photos. The Krase book also contains a very well written and informative essay on Atget's personal history and work. For true Atget junkies, you may want to own both; but if you can only have one, or if you want the one that best "transports" you into Atget's paris, go for the Krase book. ...and finally for real buffs of old Paris photos (especially pre-Hausmannization), you may try to seek out the work of the photographer Marville (good luck, unfortunately it seems his stuff is out-of-print at present), or the Panaromanic Photograph collection in the "American Memory" collection of the Library of Congress...

The beauty and degradation of a great city..........2001-11-30

This book is perhaps one of the most wonderful collections of photographs that I have ever had the pleasure of owning. Eugène Atget, a failed actor, painter, sailor, and soldier, eventually settled on photography as a career some thirty-odd years into his life, and set out to make a photographic record of the whole of Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. By 1920, some 4,000 negatives existed, from which many have been culled for the present volume.

Of course, as cities, go, Paris, like London or Rome, has perhaps more than its share of photogenic sites. However, oddly enough, considering that these photos are more than three quarters of a century old, no book has ever reproduced the experience of Paris more to my taste than this collection of Atget's work. Organised by arrondissement (the subsections into which the whole of Paris is divided), the book offers a systematic voyage past landmarks familiar and unfamiliar. Images of the Jardin des Tuilleries, Notre Dame, the Palais du Louvre, the Champs-Elysées and so many other familiar names and places are here. Faces of long-dead Parisians stare out from streets now populated by their descendants. It is as though the very images, bathed in light now a century gone, come to life in these photos. All the majesty and squalor, the beauty and degradation of a great city; these things are all captured by Atget's lens. The effect is moving and eerie, and suits what is arguably the Continent's greatest city down to the ground.

And, on a strictly personal note, one of my favourite photos is taken from the 17th Arrondissement, in the Quartier des Ternes. It is of a café in the Avenue de la Grande-Armée, dated 1924 or 1925, empty chairs and tables bathed in sunlight, and an advert for Bass Extra Stout painted on the window! Truly a sublime moment.

Do yourself a favour, if you enjoy old photographs or love Paris, or both. Find a copy of this book, and enjoy it on those days when you can't actually be there.

In Focus: Eugene Atget : Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (In Focus)
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Pocket Sized Atget

A superbly presented and invaluable contribution

19TH CENTURY PARIS PASSIONATELY DOCUMENTED FOR POSTERITY

breathtaking views of Paris in the past

Atget's Simple Documents

In Focus: Eugene Atget : Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (In Focus)
Eugene Atget
Manufacturer: Getty Trust Publications: J. Paul Getty Museum
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 089236601X

Book Description

Eugene Atget (1857-1927) spent nearly thirty years photographing details of often-inconspicuous buildings, side streets, cul-de-sacs, and public sculptures in his beloved Paris. Yet before his death, he was practically unknown outside of that city. His genius was first recognized about 1924 by
two young Americans living and working in Paris, Man Ray and his studio assistant, Berenice Abbott, who recognized the elements of contradiction, ambivalence, and ambiguity in Atget's images of Parisian architecture, streets, and parks.

Presented in this volume are more than fifty of the Getty Museum's two hundred ninety-five pictures by Atget, with commentary on each image by Gordon Baldwin, associate curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. In Focus: Eugene Atget also contains a chronological overview of his life and
an edited transcript of a colloquium on his career, with participants Baldwin; David Featherstone, independent editor and curator; photographer Robbert Flick, professor of art at the University of Southern California; independent scholar David Harris; Weston Naef, curator of photographs, Getty
Museum; Francoise Reynaud, curator of photographs at the Musee Carnavalet, Paris; and Michael S. Roth, associate director of the Getty Research Institute. This volume of the In Focus series is published to coincide with an exhibit of Atget's images from June 20 through October 18, 2000, at the Getty
Museum.

Customer Reviews:

Pocket Sized Atget.......2004-06-17

Eugene Atget spent his 30 years in photography making over 10,000 large-plate negatives of the art, architecture, and lives of Paris. His photographs capture the beauty and emotion of Paris in the late 1800s. Atget does an amazing job of engulfing the viewer into the Paris city life. His pictures of storefronts and street scenes are amazingly lit and present a romantic yet true to life view of Paris.
This small but powerful book is one of many in the Phaidon 55 series. The small size is great for carrying around, and even though the pictures are smaller then those in most photography books, they still hold true to the original prints. There is a short introduction and history of the photographer at the beginning. Each picture is accompanied by a brief description and insight into the photograph. Even though the size is smaller then most photography books, the images are still great quality, and for the price you can't go wrong.

A superbly presented and invaluable contribution.......2001-03-02

Eugene Atget (1857-1927) spent almost thirty years photographing details of often inconspicuous Parisian buildings, side streets, cul-de-sacs, and public sculptures. In Focus: Eugene Atget brings together more than 50 of the J. Paul Getty Museum's 295 photographs by Atget, with commentary on each image by associate curator of photographs at the Getty Museum, Gordon Baldwin. Atget's photograph and Baldwin's commentary are enhanced with a chronological overview of Atget's life and an edited transcript of a colloquium on his career. In Focus: Eugene Atget is a superbly presented and invaluable contribution to the history of photography.

19TH CENTURY PARIS PASSIONATELY DOCUMENTED FOR POSTERITY.......2001-01-18

Eugene Atget (1857-1927) is the undisputed photo-documentarian of 19th century Paris. With studious attention to detail, Atget seemingly photographed every intimate corner of his much-loved city. Leaving the well-known monuments and boulevards to others, Atget instead concentrated on the atmospheric fabric of everyday Paris, photographing shops and window displays, cobbled streets, doorways, stairways, vehicles, churches, amusement parks, street-peddlers and prostitutes.

Unraveling the mystery of Eugène Atget's life and work is easier said than done. Now considered to be one of history's most important photographers, Atget was relatively unknown during his lifetime. Posthumously famous for his photographs, Atget in fact made only a humble living selling his prints to architects, artists, and institutions.

Atget wrote in 1920, "I may say that I have in my possession all of Old Paris." His systematic method of photographing Paris street by street is spellbinding, and the result is a detailed catalogue of 19th century Paris. The result of Eugène Atget's life's work is gathered here in a heartbreakingly beautiful book for lovers of Paris, architecture, and photography.

breathtaking views of Paris in the past.......2000-12-30

I received this book as a gift because not only do I collect photography books but I also frequently go to Paris because I love the city. This book is full of full page photos of Paris in the past and has a dreamy quality of the day to day events and sites of Paris and the surrounding areas. It's a great collectible book for photography fans and Paris lovers.

Atget's Simple Documents.......2000-08-12

The J. Paul Getty Museum's latest photography book installment - focusing on the work of Eugene Atget, offers the best example of curators creating much ado about an artists work, through speculation and second-guessing. This merely justifies the curator's reason for employment, while boring the reader with a treasure trove of euphemisms and art-speak banter. That we learn more about each speaker's own Rorschach test interpretation of the photographs and less on the artist is not the point. The point is, why does the final third of the book contain this colloquium, when it could easily have been filled with more samplings from the Museum's 295 Atget holdings? Atget's images of Paris are brilliant for what they represent: a visual recording of what he considered worth preserving in pictures. His subject matter ranged from buildings and statues - to interiors, street merchants, and anything worthy of pursuing photographically in and around Paris. Atget's photographs gain their strength due to their simplicity; any further interpretation renders them less for their intent - which was purely documentation. Skip the verbiage contained in "Eugene Atget: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum", and just enjoy Atget's simple photographs of his beloved Paris.

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Eugene Atget, 1857-1927
James Borcoman
Manufacturer: National Gallery of Canada
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0888845103

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It says detail. It is
Paris in Detail
Reviews and book do not correlate

Atget: Paris in Detail
Josiane Sartre
Manufacturer: Flammarion
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Release Date: 2002-10-25

Book Description

The works of French photographer Eugene Atget (1857-1927) can be considered as prototypes for some of the great aesthetic movements (cubism, surrealism, conceptualism) that continue to influence modern and contemporary art. His detailed visual record of Paris and its environs were sold to painters to use as source material, and later to institutions dedicated to the preservation of the city's past. The Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs in Paris acquired nearly 1800 poetic images of decorative details such as boiseries, door knockers, staircase balustrades, garden ornaments, and magnificent plaster work from Atget's studio.

The selection of more than 300 works exquisitely reproduced in this volume were chosen not only for their documentary record of the decorative splendors of Paris, but also for their concentration on the subtleties of form and their stunning aesthetic power. Atget's continued use of a large format view camera and glass plate negatives, allowed for bigger negatives that resulted in fine details and richly toned images. His encyclopedic purpose and the simplicity of his method are so timeless that his work still fascinates today. The poetic impassivity of the images, the detailed beauty of their subjects, and the simple juxtaposition of their proportions will be an inspiration to all those interested in design and the decorative arts as well as those interested in the history of photography.

Customer Reviews:

It says detail. It is.......2007-01-16

Just as the wrought iron ornamentation made New Orleans in a way, so too is Paris influenced by its ornamentation. The title of the book makes it clear what it is. The MOMA book is not so much better than it is less focused on a single area. Atget sometimes sought to catalog much of Paris.

A great deal of the ornamentation remains,but it is theatened. by a change in style. But as someone who spent many happy days drawing in the richness of things like doors and staircases and knobs that bar the entry to courtyards, it is a touch that reminds me of the Paris that was and that is.

It could perhaps have been better described and someimes a book should be required to have at least some images of what's in it. This is one. But don't criticize a book for being exactly what it's supposed to be. It suits my taste fine. It wouldn't be my first Atget book, but I'm grateful to have it.

Paris in Detail.......2005-10-10

I recently bought Paris in Detail.
Paris in Detail is literally that, lots of detailled close up photos of Paris doorways, arches, detailled doorframes, and intricate wrought iron stairways. Although there is a few photos of detailled sculptures in it, the majority of the book focusses on doors, metal doorknockers, fireplaces, doorways and stairwells of old style Paris. The pages in the book are all black and white photos mostly covering the whole of each page. Many of the photos are of late 1890's in Paris.

Reviewed By Liz Kelly

Reviews and book do not correlate.......2004-07-12

These reviews refer to the Museum of Modern Art Atget book- not the Paris in Detail book. Click under "all editions" to see the MOMA book. Amazon has to rectify this. I think the MOMA book deserves 5 stars. I have not seen the Paris in Detail book.

I put one star because Amazon requires something in the blank, and I thought it might draw attention to this.

Eugene Atget (1857-1927): Das alte Paris : [Ausstellung, Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, 30.8.-1.10.1978 : Katalog (Kunst und Altertum am Rhein)
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Eugene Atget (1857-1927): Das alte Paris : [Ausstellung, Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, 30.8.-1.10.1978 : Katalog (Kunst und Altertum am Rhein)
Eugene Atget
Manufacturer: in Kommission bei R. Habelt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Perfect Paperback

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ASIN: 3792704110

EUGENE ATGET (Pantheon Photo Library, Vol 2)
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EUGENE ATGET (Pantheon Photo Library, Vol 2)
Eugene Atget
Manufacturer: Pantheon
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 039474084X
Release Date: 1985-11-12

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Looking at Atget, again.

A Distintive Contribution to Atget Scholarship

Good scholarship but incomplete

Fresh eyes for Looking at Atget

Looking at Atget
Eugene Atget , Beth A. Price , and Ken Sutherland
Manufacturer: Philadelphia Museum of Art
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0876331908

Customer Reviews:

Looking at Atget, again........2006-10-29

If you are a dyed in the wool Atget fan, and have over, let's say, 10 books of his work in your personal library, this is another you'll like to add to your collection. For those just getting into Atget, there are other, less expensive books to start with, that are not as in depth, and do not include the highly specialized section about the physical properties of the actual prints in the museum's collection. As a photographer, I found that section interesting, but the average viewer probably does not need this information.

A Distintive Contribution to Atget Scholarship.......2006-02-17

This book was a pleasure to read and will appeal to anyone interested in Eugene Atget, the history of photography, or early twentieth-century European and American modernism. It presents in rich duotone color about 100 photographs from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's collection of almost 400 Eugene Atget prints, most of which the Museum acquired in 2001, as well as approximately a dozen other images that the authors included for comparison purposes. It was published at the time of the Museum's exhibition of Atget photographs, September to November 2005.

While more than a dozen books are currently available about Atget's work, this one makes a substantial and distinctive contribution by focusing primarily on Julien Levy, the collector and art dealer who assembled most of the Atget images in the Philadelphia Museum's collection. It also places Levy's activities within the circle of his American friends who also admired Atget's work in the late 1920s, especially Man Ray and Berenice Abbott. Moreover, it provides a welcome and accessible overview of the often contentious scholarship that has emerged over the last twenty five year about Atget's intentions by succinctly summarizing the writings of such luminaries in the field as Maria Morris Hambourg, John Szarkowski, Molly Nesbit, Abigail Solomon-Godeau and David Travis. Plus, the book contains a brief, technical essay on Atget's photographic materials, written by the Museum's conservation scientists Beth A. Price and Ken Sutherland.

This is no mere coffee table book--although I would be happy to display it on my coffee table--but rather a beautifully designed, scholarly publication with seven pages of endnotes and selected bibliography. The photographs are presented within the context of Barberie's skillfully written, carefully researched essay; Dean Bornstein's stylish book design presents the images in close proximity to relevant passages within Barberie's text. The most intriguing photographs are reproduced full-page. Some other images have been reduced slightly, to the width of the text. The rather ordinary images appear smaller still, sometimes three images to a page.

If I were to criticize Barberie's extensive research and remarkably balanced point of view here, it would be to say that I was not always convinced by Barberie's attempts to explain Levy's attraction to Atget's photographs so narrowly in terms of French Surrealism. Barberie does this by quoting from Rosalind Krauss's seminal book "L'Amour fou: Photography and Surrealism" and then looking through Levy's collection for works that seem to satisfy the Surrealist aesthetic as defined by Krauss. I wanted to read more about Levy's reaction to the "fantastique" ideas about Atget (and other European modern photographers) written by Pierre Mac Orlan. After all, it was Mac Orlan who wrote the introduction to the first book ever published about Atget's work--in 1930, the same year that Levy mounted his first exhibition of Atget's work. I also would have liked to read more about Levy's response (if any) to French, German and American exhibitions of modern photography in the late 1920s and early 1930s, most of which posthumously included examples of Atget's work. But these are minor quibbles. All in all, this book represents a distinctive and welcome addition to the literature on Atget.

Good scholarship but incomplete.......2005-11-29

This is a catalog of the excellent show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It is about a collection and Julien Levy, the collector, N.Y. gallery owner and champion of the avant-garde. Berenice Abbott and Julien Levy worked together to collect, conserve and promote Atget's work and a large amount of the collection (361 prints) was given to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Barberie's essay, which is the heart of the catalog is informed and well written. It clarifies some questions of Atget's position among the Paris artist's of the 20's, including some opinions of May Ray, Duchamp, Brancusi and other friends of Levy. This is the best part of Barbie's writing.

There is a second essay on the techniques use by Atget in his printing and by Abbott in her experiments to print from Atget's negatives. This writing is interesting as far as it goes, but it creates more questions than it answers and has a few minor errors.

This catalog is not a survey of Atget's work and it is not a high quality coffee table book of prints. If you want either of these you should look to the publications and writing of John Szarkowski and Maria Morris Hambourg of MOMA, the authoritative refrences used in this excellent catalog from Philadelphia. If you are an art historian this might be a good introduction to a couple of important, perhaps heroic collectors.

Fresh eyes for Looking at Atget.......2005-11-01

Brilliant. An absolute must for those interested photography. This beautiful book places Atget in a historical context that allows the reader to truly see why Atget made such a huge impact in the art world.

Get it!

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