Page 20 - Studio International - December 1971

his subjects in complete and varied series from straightforward way, that a brilliant picture is a part played by actual people in many of those
a number of camera positions. It was not enough brilliant picture and a dull one a dull one, and pictures, and I think that this paradox gives us a
to take a photograph of a street. It was that the kind of cumulative effect that matters valuable point of entry into his creative
important for him to show the street as a viewer most (as with Cezanne, Utrillo, Van Gogh, intelligence. To explain that absence on
might see it if he turned his head in various Toulouse-Lautrec, Piranesi, and other artists technical grounds alone won't do.14 Atget was,
directions. He felt the need to show the process who have 'documented' locales) is the as I have said, a professional, and if he persisted
of growth and decay in a great city, and hence accumulation of major images. Weak images do throughout his career in using a camera that was
would photograph a building, as for example the not add to strong ones, they subtract from them, cumbersome, obtrusive, and relatively slow, it
basilica of Sacré-Coeur, in various stages of for they dull the mind of the viewer. Well, it is was plainly not because he couldn't afford one of
construction. He applied the same technique to plain that for all the breadth of his subject-matter the smaller and technically far better ones on the
the demolition of several buildings in Paris. He Atget was not equally interested in everything- market but because it suited his needs very well.
continually varied his approach to a subject, not interested creatively, I mean. On the whole his And if he did a good deal of his work in the
only with camera angles, but from a distance to photographs of public buildings such as early morning or at other times when empty
extremely close up ... Among the subjects he churches seem unremarkable aesthetically, for streets could easily be found, it wasn't because
treated with exhaustive thoroughness and in example; so do those of upper-class exteriors his camera simply couldn't cope with people in
series were trees, flowers, shop windows, streets, and interiors; so do those of unrelievedly motion. It could cope with them surprisingly
cafés, brothels, monuments, buildings, street squalid scenes without people in them; so do well, as a number of his pictures testify. I am
vendors, rag-pickers, St. Cloud, Versailles, the those of towns outside Paris; so do those of aware that, given his subject-matter and the
Bois de Boulogne, and architectural detail of architectural details; and so do those of groups need for relatively long exposures, it was in fact
every kind.' 8 of people in the Paris streets taken in candid- more convenient for him to work when few
Well, we now have a number of samples of at camera fashion unawares. They have their own people were around. My point, however, is that
least twenty-two of the series,9 and quite kinds of interest, of course, both as historical we should assume that Atget did exactly what he
probably (depending on how they are defined) documents and as examples of Atget's wanted to do and that it makes no sense to think
of all of them. And even where those tantalizing unselfconscious professionalism in gaining a of 'this man of violent temper and of absolute
pictures of trees and flowers are concerned- living from clients who had no interest in ideas [who] had all the patience of a saint with
almost the largest single series, according to Miss photography itself as an art.13 (Indeed, that his photographing'15 as chafing for thirty years
Abbott10- at least forty are now in print, professionalism, that concern with capturing against the restrictions of an unsuitable camera.
displaying almost as wide a variety of approaches any object as clearly and as respectfully as A more persuasive argument, accordingly, would
as seems possible with such subjects. possible, was obviously fundamental to Atget's be that his fifteen years or so as an actor before
Furthermore, having been able to go through total freedom from the kind of artiness in he took up photography had affected his way of
some five hundred of the unreproduced prints 11 photography that consisted in trying to seeing : his pictures do indeed, as Miss Abbott
I can testify that though Atget was a genius he approximate it to painting and that was points out, 'repeatedly suggest the stage setting
took a good many dull pictures. (Indeed, even a embalmed during those pre-war years in so which one beholds after the curtain goes up,' 16
number of the ones that have been reproduced many of the pages of Alfred Stieglitz's periodical and the sense that people will be using the
are relatively dull.) And by now at least eleven Camera Work.) Furthermore, Atget in fact took various 'entrances' and 'properties' is a powerful
editors have had the opportunity to make some very distinguished pictures of almost all factor in the humanized quality of the scenes.
selections from his unpublished work, and there the subjects mentioned in this paper so far. (There is nothing, in any pejorative sense of the
has been a substantial amount of overlapping in Nevertheless, when one goes by the degree of word, theatrical about those scenes, of course.)
their choices. All in all, then, I judge that we originality, iconographical richness, and formal However, I think that the explanation needs to
have a fair enough idea of the range and quality brilliance displayed, his finest pictures fall be more complex. If one is intensely conscious of
of Atget's work. It seems time to take some fresh preponderantly into the following main groups : ordinary lives interpenetrating those temporarily
bearings in it. pictures of unpeopled or virtually unpeopled empty streets and squares and rooms, I suggest
Miss Abbott has said of Atget's oeuvre that Paris streets, quais, and courtyards; pictures of that this is because one is conscious of being
`Here is the great demonstration that commercial establishments; pictures of vehicles; there in an 'ordinary' sort of way oneself. And I
photography is a cumulative art. The effect pictures of the great public gardens and parks; suggest too that if Atget engaged only very
upon the mind, emotions, and aesthetic pictures of trees and flowers in close-up; pictures marginally in the kind of 'candid' work that one
sensibilities of the still photograph is due to the of petit bourgeois interiors; and pictures of sees in many photographs from the 189os and
superimposition of image upon image, of idea working men and women posing for their early 1900s, 17 this was because what he was
upon idea. The pictures made by Atget with his portraits in the streets in the course of their engaged in seizing was not directly a peopled
camera are deposited layer upon layer on the work. Furthermore, there seem to me to be city but certain basic aspects of the city as they
consciousness. The final total is similar to the some definite relationships between those impinged on someone actually living in it in an
vast range of Balzac's human comedy, where his groups. I propose to concentrate largely on ordinary daily way.
hundreds of characters move in and out of those groups and those relationships with a view More specifically, what Atget seems to me to
complicated relations and the specific action or to establishing certain cardinal points in Atget's have been fundamentally concerned with was the
event described is richer because the reader vision of the city; and I believe that those points city as a place in which one moves around,
remembers other actions and events in which will remain firm however much additional work consumes things, seeks mental refreshment, and
these men and women participated. Only with by him becomes available to us. rests. And from this point of view the 'candid'
Atget's photographs, the direct sight is at last approach in which other people are caught in
seen, in intimate impact with a city, a civilization II more or less interesting action can be in a sense
with all its amplifications, an epoch of history. That the less well-to-do areas in the city should irrelevant, or at least very peripheral, the
`Atget's realm of creative effort was not, have been on the whole the more inspiring to product of a very special way of looking (partly
however, the human comedy or the human Atget seems easily enough explicable: the things journalistic, partly derived from artists like
tragedy, but the miracle of the city he loved in them bore far more marks of human use than Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec) in which the
beyond words.'12 those in the 'better' neighbourhoods. Yet if the observer has screwed himself up to an
That is admirably put. At the same time, though, felt presence of the human is an essential feature abnormal alertness to other people's movements
it can hardly be stressed too strongly that in Atget's best urban photographs, it is and expressions. Looking on, in other words,
photography is an art in a perfectly noteworthy how non-existent or minimal is the has replaced the kind of seeing that accompanies

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