Eugene Atget

[cliveh]

I would be interested to know what FADU members think about the work of Eugene Atget.

For me he is the Van Gogh of photography, but when I first saw some of his images I did not immediately understand or appreciate them. However, the more I looked at them; I gradually began to understand his genius.

[Neil Smith]

Beautiful work, as good as any photographer of that era. Deceptively simple photographs but a wonderful body of work, a huge archive documenting France, mainly Paris I think. I think he only had recognition late in life, but had many famous admirers of his work.


Neil

[TonyMiller]

I recently bought John Szarkowski's MOMA book which discusses a hundred of Atget's photographs - a brilliant book and one which I would recommend not only for it's photographic quality but also the research and writings of Szarkowski.
I find it interesting how Atget went from someone who documented old Paris to sell his works to painters, to becoming, as Szarkowski calls him, 'a vital influence on modern and contemporary photography'.

Why do you think of him as the Van Gogh of photography and what do you perceive his 'genius' to be?

- Tony

[cliveh]

Why do you think of him as the Van Gogh of photography and what do you perceive his 'genius' to be?

- Tony[/QUOTE]

I suppose it’s because some of his images have a sense of presence. I can understand how paintings may have this quality, but to inject a sense of presence into a photomechanical process defies the laws of physics.

[Maris]

The famous Eugene Atget is entirely the invention of Berenice Abbott one of the well-to-do American women that flocked to Paris in the 1920's. She collected, publicised, and promoted Atget's work relentlessly with the end result that Atget became lauded in the famous histories of photography written by Newhall, Gernsheim, and others. In all the years since it has been impossible to critique Atget except as one of the all-time greats.

I reckon the real Eugene Atget was a photographer of limited ability, limited technique, limited subject matter, and limited imagination and he embraced these limitations to pursue his real agenda. His aim was the consistent, exhaustive, sensitive, dispassionate, even artless recording of what was around him; the changing face of Paris and its people.

Eugene Atget was not a colossus of early 20th century photography but rather an example of a quiet genius producing a sublime body of work that could have very easily escaped the notice of the art-world. I venture to think there are several people in FADU a bit like that today.

[Miha]

Atget is one of the few geniuses of the media. Along with Nadar, Sander, and Kertesz. I admire his work.

[DougHowk]

It's interesting that Atget's photographs, which he marketed to artists as aides to creating art, should in turn be discovered by the Surrealist movement as works of art.