Page 25 - Studio International - December 1971

takes us a step further along (see fig. 5). A and icons are absent altogether. At least three of
plethora of trunks and suitcases form two Atget's photographs of food-stuffs on display
intricately arranged mounds on the sidewalk —respectively vegetables, poultry, and seafood
outside the store, the aisle between them being (V38, A22; W90; see fig. 7)—are characterized
guarded at the store entrance by two by an energy and drama almost as great as in
top-hatted, elegantly bewhiskered, and very the nature pictures I have mentioned. And there
gentlemanly dummies. The sunshine warms are a couple of unpeopled cafe pictures, one
them, just as it warms the four pieces of interior, one exterior (C31, A34), all radiant
clothing swinging from hooks on the small with early morning sunshine yet welcoming
awning over them, and picks out casually a with coolness too, which in their calm
couple of groups of hanging trumpets and a splendour bring to mind alike the more lyrical
drum; but behind them there is darkness. rural panoramas and the loveliest shots of the
Oblivious to all the invitations to voyaging and great formal gardens. Furthermore, in their
masculine gesturing, the aproned store-woman, structures, materials, and neat rows of identical
hardly noticeable at first, sits bent over her forms both places are replete with intimations of
sewing in front of the jauntier of the two the new technological forces that have produced
dummies, while above the awning the them, without their being in the least 'degraded'
second-story is reassuringly firm and domestic thereby. And the crisp white lettering of the
in the sunlight. Journeyings and rest, the placid names of Bass Extra Stout, Dewar's White
and the martial, a calm explicitness and an Label, and other delicacies, on the windows of
evocative chiaroscuro—these are obvious the exterior scene brings me to the important
enough, of course. My chief point, though, is subject of commercial iconography.
that what the picture as a whole embodies is the
drama of commercial distribution and
consumption, with the eye-catching variety of
goods making possible a variety of important
and natural human activities. Viewed in this
light, neither the provenance of those goods
nor their transmission (however 'humble' the 4 Triple fork of tree
trades-person engaged in it) is ignoble. And 5 Shopfront
the intermingled heroic and pastoral aspects of
the commercial seem to me even more apparent 6 Statue of Ceres ( ?)
in certain pictures in which 'traditional' symbols 7 Still-life of seafood in market
6