Eugene Atget Appreciation

[snusmumriken]

I've owned five boats and sailed extensively. And you?

I suspect you are taking this too personally. I said "If...", and it wasn't meant to be judgemental. But FWIW, I have rowed, sailed and canoed all my life. And I got halfway through building a clinker sailing dinghy but had to give it up for family reasons. None of which has anything to do with Atget.

 

[Arthurwg]

I suspect you are taking this too personally. I said "If...", and it wasn't meant to be judgemental. But FWIW, I have rowed, sailed and canoed all my life. And I got halfway through building a clinker sailing dinghy but had to give it up for family reasons. None of which has anything to do with Atget.

Oh I've forgotten the rowing and canoeing. There's very little water here in New Mexico so I've given up boats. But I have almost as many yachting books as I have photography. Armchair sailor now.

 

[Don_ih]

Atget's Studio. By Atget 1912

moving on from boats

 

[Arthurwg]

10,000 negatives. It's amazing what can be accomplished.

 

[albireo]

Atget's Studio. By Atget 1912


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moving on from boats

Does anyone know the purpose of those three dark pipes+boxes hanging on the wall on the left?

 

[snusmumriken]

Does anyone know the purpose of those three dark pipes+boxes hanging on the wall on the left?

Safelights? With oil lamps in the chimneys?

 

[cliveh]

10,000 negatives. It's amazing what can be accomplished.

Some may interpret this statement to mean, if you take 10,000 images, that some will be good. But in fact, you have hit the nail on the head here, in so far as if you do something again and again, infinitum, you acquire a skill that takes you into a realm that can’t be taught and that’s where you produce the magic.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Now in the digital camera age, many people have taken hundreds of thousands of images already. But there's nothing necessarily proportionate about that. Sometimes those machine-gunner types are the ones who end up with the least number of compelling images.
Atget didn't rely on luck. Not only was his methodology too slow for that, but his range of subjects was rather wide within his defined demographic limits. He no doubt took many interesting images, which, while sorting through them time to time, caused him to especially gravitate toward certain ones, contributing to his learning curve. That's probably the experience of many of us, especially those of us who print our own slides or negatives.

The three pipes on his studio wall? Perhaps light-tight air vents. Looks like he was using some stinky chemical bottles in there.

 

[Don_ih]

Perhaps light-tight air vents.

Er, slim to none is my guess on the likelihood of that. In that time, if the air was overpowering, you left the room.

My bet is oil-burning safelights. The tops would be grated to diffuse the white light and vent the fumes, the fronts would be red glass.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Does anyone know the purpose of those three dark pipes+boxes hanging on the wall on the left?

Kind of looks like what's on the top left of this old German illustration of photographic equipment. Name is "Dunkelkammeristerne" — not sure exactly what that means, but I do know that "Dunkel" means "dark" and "kammer" means "room", so...

 

[koraks]

Name is "Dunkelkammeristerne"

Nope, it says "Dunkelkammerlaterne". "Laterne" = 'lantern.' So they're in fact safe lights. @snusmumriken was right, although it may just have been a simple candle in there instead of an oil burner.

 

[snusmumriken]

I’ve just found something similar for sale on eBay UK, here. Specifically says oil lamp.

 

[nikos79]

If Atget's boat had come from Ikea, it would have sunken long before he got a chance to photograph it, with all the paper-thin veneer soaked off, and the cheap particle board core dissolved into damp sawdust down in the muck. Thank goodness, there were no Ikea stores back then.

Atget was a master in how he used trees to complement his compositions. The Post 283 example is indeed unusual. But I "got it" long ago. It is his own intuitive venture into Constructivism, for lack of a better term. Carleton Watkins and Sheeler were the photographic masters of that (only certain Watkins ULF prints clearly exhibit it, taken well before there was a school of painters doing it; Sheeler both photographed and painted). It's a daring division of space right in front of the rest of the picture, so can be intimidating in that respect; a bold experiment, at least, but certainly not the manner Atget typically handled trees.

Watkins' examples were truly prescient of modern art; but this one example of the same kind of compositional strategy with Atget might or might not have been inspired by what contemporary painters were already doing. More recently, Friedlander attempted those kinds of arboreal overlays, but in a half-baked way in my opinion - just too conspicuously forced and artsty.

It's surprisingly difficult to compose well in that manner. I was out yesterday with the 4x5 and a long lens working with a very intricate tree overlaid upon another kind of tree, but that was all at a distance and essentially two-dimensional, and in color as well - whole different ballgame.

It’s interesting you mentioned Carleton Watkins. I see him as an inspired landscape photographer and a true master of composition. His Yosemite landscapes feel quite different from those of Ansel Adams. While Adams glorifies nature itself, Watkins seems to celebrate the art of photography — his images are a testament to the photographer’s eye, not just the grandeur of the scenery.

 

[nikos79]

Well, frankly, it's hard to beat an interesting tree as a photographic subject. It's probably only behind women and mountains. (actually, it's probably ahead of mountains and cars but now behind lunch...)

Haha true! In my list the subjects hardest to beat are too:

1. Mountains
2. (Very Beautiful or very ugly) women
3. Babies
4. Nudes
5. Sunsets
6. Night scenes

 

[Alex Benjamin]

Nope, it says "Dunkelkammerlaterne".

Good thing your eyes are better than mine.

 

[koraks]

Good thing your eyes are better than mine.

Well, admittedly, not so much the eyes, but linguistic association helped in this case.

 

[Arthurwg]

Some may interpret this statement to mean, if you take 10,000 images, that some will be good. But in fact, you have hit the nail on the head here, in so far as if you do something again and again, infinitum, you acquire a skill that takes you into a realm that can’t be taught and that’s where you produce the magic.

Actually I was thinking about his modest workplace and how much he accomplished in a very basic way.

 

[snusmumriken]

Actually I was thinking about his modest workplace and how much he accomplished in a very basic way.

Me too. It’s humbling.

I was also thinking that 10,000 negatives would be upwards of a tonne of glass (working on the assumption that they would be at least 5x4 inches and 3mm thick).

EDIT: I’ve just read in Wikipedia that his plates were 180×240mm, which is about 3 times the area that I guessed, so more like 3 tonnes of glass! Please do check my maths/math if so inclined.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I’ve just found something similar for sale on eBay UK, here. Specifically says oil lamp.

It's amazing he didn't burn his house down with those contraptions.

 

[koraks]

It's amazing he didn't burn his house down with those contraptions.

Whomever might be alive a century from now might say the same about us, with all those lithium batteries all over the place.

 

[warden]

Atget's Studio. By Atget 1912


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moving on from boats

Thanks for sharing that. I like seeing workspaces.

 

[Don_ih]

I like seeing workspaces.

I thought it was pretty interesting. And not exactly what one would imagine. I also like the pictures on the wall and wish I could see them more clearly.

It's amazing he didn't burn his house down with those contraptions.

Those things are perfectly safe, if used properly. 100 years ago, people generally were more competent about such things than they are now - and more aware of the danger of mishandling something like that.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It was the early era of uncoated electrical wiring that was especially hazardous, both shock and flame wise. Now we have nice 18ga vinyl coated lamp wire being plugged ad infinitum into multiple outlet strips along with countless junk battery chargers, space heaters, and who knows what else. Not exactly an improvement, unless the Darwin Award progressively weeds out the idiot gene via human combustion.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I thought it was pretty interesting. And not exactly what one would imagine. I also like the pictures on the wall and wish I could see them more clearly.



Those things are perfectly safe, if used properly. 100 years ago, people generally were more competent about such things than they are now - and more aware of the danger of mishandling something like that.

You mean like the cow that kicked over Mrs. O'Leary's lantern that burned down Chicago in 1871?

 

[koraks]

human combustion.

But...is it spontaneous? 1990s Discovery Channel wants to know!