Eugene Atget Appreciation

Alex Benjamin · Jan 14, 2025

koraks said:
My conclusion is that it went something like this:
"Hmm, that corner is nice with the staircases and the sign over it. Too bad about the cart full of horse manure against this wall; I'd have liked to be able to take one or two steps back. Ah well, let's just frame it a little tight and see how it pans out. Mr. Serviette who likes to buy this kind of scene from me can always frame it a little wider, using his imagination to fill in the gaps."

Well, your hypothesis is as valid as mine. Actually, both may be right, even though I find a tad dismissive and a bit of a caricature the idea that a craftsman will botch his work if he is doing it in order to later sell it. Also, Atget did some commissions, did some work essentially in order to sell to different institutions, and did some work for himself—and nothing prevented him from later selling the work he did for himself. For some, we do know the intent, for others, we don't.

Milpool · Jan 14, 2025

Looking carefully, revisiting etc. are all good ideas, but I think sometimes there is such a thing as looking too hard.

DREW WILEY · Jan 14, 2025

Like I said, Atget knew what he was doing. You and I aren't Atget, and tend to revisit such images with our own esthetic in mind, and how our own cameras might tackle it.

I used to do that with Eliot Porter images. My older brother idolized him, and somehow my parents scrounged up the money to buy a first edition of his famous coffee table book of Glen Canyon when my brother was recovering from heart surgery (quite an ordeal back then).
I'd slowly peruse those pages with a big piece of white cardboard and crop into them as if they were my shots instead. I tend to see the image plane even shallower and tighter than Porter did. And sure enough, twenty years later when I had a 4x5 camera and at least a makeshift color darkroom, that's how I shot and printed relative to perspective and composition. It worked for me. But I can also comprehend Porter's own particular esthetic, and why he did things his own way - sometimes very successfully, sometimes less so.

cliveh · Jan 20, 2025

How about this? Just look at the balance of extreme highlight values.

Milpool · Jan 20, 2025

I like this one, but for me it doesn’t have anything to do with the balance of extreme highlights - in fact I’d like it more without those extremes. On the other hand that’s nothing but my opinion, not knowing what Atget wanted (or if the highlights, contrast etc. even mattered to him). I don’t know enough about his working methods and whether or not these kinds of things were deliberate or not.

It’s funny, I imagine in a lot of photography classes or workshops someone showing prints like this would get critical feedback on technique or even composition (framing).

DREW WILEY · Jan 20, 2025

Looking at scanned and sometimes "improved" images of Atget work tends to lend a different impression than his actual prints. An amount of "modernized" interpretation takes place. His own preferred printing papers didn't have all that high of a DMax, and certainly weren't cold toned. Different feel.

koraks · Jan 21, 2025

I agree with @Milpool and also @DREW WILEY - overall a pleasantly composed, straightforward image; maybe a little heavy on the left side. But the rendition shown is most definitely not what Atget made, so whether this approximates what he intended isn't clear. That heavy bit on the left side would likely have appeared much less heavy on the warmtone media he used.

miha · Jan 21, 2025

I guess this is more like how the original photo looks?

snusmumriken · Jan 21, 2025

miha said:
I guess this is more like how the original photo looks?

View attachment 388511

There’s a lot more shadow detail in that original (contact?) print. I hadn’t even noticed the two ladies in the version @cliveh posted.

DREW WILEY · Jan 21, 2025

Yeah, that's about how the prints look, although quite a number of them suffer somewhat from mildew stain and paper discoloration. And they were strictly contact prints. But restored images are sometimes made from his negatives rather than scanning actual prints. Coy prints on modern papers are often too contrasty and cold-toned to faithfully represent the original concept.

Women looking out of windows or doorways often indicate seedy street brothels. He hunted out older rundown parts of town which remained after the massive remodeling of Paris under Napoleon III (which he strongly disapproved of - he wanted to record the "authentic French culture" instead). You can see just how primitive the sanitation or sewer itself was, running right down the middle of a narrow crooked street.

The more open shadow light in that particular image suits his style. It's probably on printing-out paper, although the look is almost like albumen were it not for the yellowness. It was obviously poorly stored prior to modern archiving, with a lot of edge stain and general paper yellowing. Probably worth a lot due to being an original with all the necessary notations. Not one of my personal favorites, but still, all the characteristic compositional balance and charm is there; and yes, the touch of secondary details too. He probably asked the women to pose in the window.

His gear and technique were anachronistic even in his own day. But oh those compositions! - presciently modern, like a masterful jigsaw puzzle with every piece fitting just right. The whole thing in this case feels like it is just about to tumble down due to being top-heavy, and is deliberately skewed. Even the upper corner vignetting plays its role, as it so often does in his work. It's like looking into an alcove in a sandstone canyon.

miha · Jan 21, 2025

DREW WILEY said:
His gear and technique were anachronistic even in his own day.

I read that people made fun of him while taking (making?) the photos.
I wonder if using my latest ultra-modern Linhof Kardan monorail camera with a black cloth on the streets of my hometown would also make me look ridiculous.

DREW WILEY · Jan 21, 2025

Depends where you are. Around here, I always get complimented for using a view camera with an rustic-looking wooden tripod. Certain other places, I've had rocks thrown at me.

Milpool · Jan 21, 2025

miha said:
I read that people made fun of him while taking (making?) the photos.
I wonder if using my latest ultra-modern Linhof Kardan monorail camera with a black cloth on the streets of my hometown would also make me look ridiculous.

I sometimes use a Kardan RE and I definitely look ridiculous

Dr. no · Jan 26, 2025

snusmumriken said:
There is a mystery in the fact that we can’t tell whether this was a bookseller or a library (depending whether the penultimate letter is an I or a T)

That's not the mystery here. Librairie ("bookery") is bookstore, a biblioteque is a library. Common cognate confusion with English-speakers. And interestingly, googletranslate gets it wrong too, AI is not ready for primetime yet.

Maybe there is a lot of "they're good because they're Atget's" going on - some of the defence of that Librairie photo is bordering on ludicrous. But there are many, many excellent Atget photos, just assessed from fairly mundane ideas of "good composition". It doesn't take much effort to recognize that.

Definitely. Many of these were not his choices of what to show us, 100 years later.

I appreciate his work on two levels: some of it for compositional and technical choices, and most of it for nostalgic reasons (much like the WPA photographers also, Even Dorothea Lange had off days).
Atget clearly had personal aesthetics that did not dictate leveling and framing the way most of us would do it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

cliveh · Jan 26, 2025

In zen photography, life is not about Euclidian geometry and framing a scene to fit nicely into a rectangular or square box. It is about glimpses of the world around us. If you can arrest such a glimpse you have succeeded in capturing an image that will be remembered.

Arthurwg · Feb 12, 2025

Still thinking about this, it comes to me that what sets Atget apart, what his real subject is, consciously or unconsciously, is "memory." Yes, he was working in the present, but the sensibility at work is memory.

Alex Benjamin · Feb 12, 2025

Arthurwg said:
Still thinking about this, it comes to me that what sets Atget apart, what his real subject is, consciously or unconsciously, is "memory." Yes, he was working in the present, but the sensibility at work is memory.

I think that sums up pretty well the essence of it. And it's certainly that essence that Walker Evans found in Atget, and that he transposed in his vision of the US.

cliveh · Feb 12, 2025

Arthurwg said:
Still thinking about this, it comes to me that what sets Atget apart, what his real subject is, consciously or unconsciously, is "memory." Yes, he was working in the present, but the sensibility at work is memory.

I don't get that. It was not about memory, but in my opinion the zen of right now.

Alex Benjamin · Feb 12, 2025

cliveh said:
It was not about memory, but the zen of right now.

I'm with Arthurwg on this.

I think we forget how violent modernity was felt by those who had known the 19th century and were still alive in the first two decades of the 20th. Cars, the telephone, planes, etc., and the two defining moments of the century, the Great War and the Great Depression.

There is no nostalgia in Atget, nor sentimentality—and the same can be said of Evans. But there is memory, in the sense of looking at old things with the knowledge that they—the thing themselves and what they represent, culturally—are soon to disappear completely.

It should be no surprise that the most famous French novel published in these years (between 1913 and 1927) was titled Remembrance of Things Past (A la recherche du temps perdu).

albireo · Feb 13, 2025

Arthurwg said:
Still thinking about this, it comes to me that what sets Atget apart, what his real subject is, consciously or unconsciously, is "memory." Yes, he was working in the present, but the sensibility at work is memory.

Nice. I have the commented Szarkowski book here on my lap as I type. The fact that in some of those images I am able to appreciate elements of the urban planning, building textures and street layout a Parisian might have encountered during their daily walk in the XVII century is - to me - mind boggling. Atget has given us -consciously or unconsciously - a document as powerful as a one-way time machine.

Did other countries ever have their Atget? Was there an Atget roaming the streets of eg Oslo, Shangai, Tokyo, Rome, El Cairo? If so has any of their work survived?

Alex Benjamin · Feb 13, 2025

albireo said:
Did other countries ever have their Atget? Was there an Atget roaming the streets of eg Oslo, Shangai, Tokyo, Rome, El Cairo? If so has any of their work survived?

That's a fantastic question. Many have documented the people of a particular city, but I can't think of that many who, like Atget, were concerned first and foremost with place (rather than its inhabitants) and with the documentation of the living past (safe for Walker Evans, but only to a certain point).

MattKing · Feb 13, 2025

Fred Herzog in Vancouver comes to mind:

albireo · Feb 13, 2025

MattKing said:
Fred Herzog in Vancouver comes to mind:
View attachment 391003

I have this too! Gorgeous. I was thinking more about early XX century photographer though.

But this reminds me - I remember seeing some pictures from 'old' Pittsburgh (I think it was) by a local, mostly forgotten photographer. I might be wrong of course and the guy might be famous. He went around the 'old town' of the city documenting how people lived during the industrial boom the city went through (steel if I'm not wrong?).

I remember these pictures because the images looked like the depiction of the old town of a central/Eastern European city (actually many of them). Beautiful old terraced houses, mostly made of wood etc.

Does anyone know who this photographer might be? The images were quite 'Atgetian' if I recall correctly.

DREW WILEY · Feb 13, 2025

Thanks for pointing out Fred Herzog. It looks like he certainly beat Stephen Shore to the punch, but just didn't get the credit he deserved. Similarities to Atget? - not so much.

MattKing · Feb 13, 2025

DREW WILEY said:
Thanks for pointing out Fred Herzog. It looks like he certainly beat Stephen Shore to the punch, but just didn't get the credit he deserved. Similarities to Atget? - not so much.

Part of the challenge of the issue is that you need to have some sense about what pre-and-post WWII Vancouver was like.
A lot of Fred Herzog's interesting work showed what was still around from then.
If you had been around Vancouver in the 1970ss and earlier, you could have seen it instead in rented Church halls as projected Kodachrome slides - for a small admission charge

Eugene Atget Appreciation

Alex Benjamin

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miha

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Arthurwg

Alex Benjamin

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albireo

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MattKing

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Eugene Atget Appreciation

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