Page 28 - Studio International - December 1971

Populaire' marches in trompe-l'oeil circus-type on the side directly facing us, but the block is have discussed, it has its own kind of dignity.
lettering a foot and a half high across the width more pejoratively commercial than the other
of a weather-grimed little store-front whose doors one. The stories above the café are occupied by VI
and windows are covered by blank and equally what looks like a cheap hotel; the side of the This brings me finally to Atget's handling of
grimy-looking shutters (A61). The lettering in block that recedes from us along the cross-street people. If I have lingered over the street-corner
that picture is in fact attractive, as is a good deal is occupied by two or three tiny one-story picture, this is partly because in it a certain
of the lettering that Atget shows.28 stores displaying goods indistinctly under stiffness of line, sharpness of detail, and
Furthermore, the enlivening of the façade awnings; and rising up behind the stores is a explicitness of form predominate in the buildings
reminds one of the general enlivening and high windowless wall. The roadway is cobbled and are emphasized by the symmetrical
opening up of metaphorical doors and and glistening, with the tracks of vehicles composition and the evenly distributed light
windows that the newspaper can bring. And curving around the corner. Because of the from the grey sky. The picture, as I have said, is
the same kind of affirmativeness characterizes camera angle, the gap between the two blocks replete with life, but it is obvious that this sort
one of the best of the pictures in which Atget is small—small enough, in fact, to be spanned of urban scene, stripped of certain elements,
confronts advertising head-on, namely the by the cross-piece of a wrought-iron could become oppressive and anti-human, and
well-known one of those canopied, lamp-standard standing against the corner of a number of Atget's pictures of people or their
advertisement-bearing pillars (`colonnes the right-hand block. Below the lamp itself the surrogates seem to touch on this possibility. It is
d'affichage' is the technical term for them) that baroque doorway of a church is visible in the especially tempting to take a tip from those
are as indigenous to the Paris sidewalks as the distance; above the lamp the upper part of the haunting images of store-mannequins that
pissoirs (V41, A29). Though it is the pillar that church fades away into the rain-whitened sky. caught the eyes of the Surrealists and were
catches one's eye most immediately, everything Across the façade of the hotel on the left are the among the earliest of Atget's works to be
in the picture in fact interacts in Atget's words 'de la Montagne'; below, the words reproduced. There is, for instance, the famous
customary way. The posing of the pillar against `Liqueurs, Cafe, Bière' run the full width of the single figure displaying work-clothes between
a background of trees and a corner of a cafe in elegant lettering; above the entrance of cases of cheap shirts and dental items (A26)—
decorously baroque church works the reverse the café on the right are the words `Au headless, handless, its sleeves hanging down
of ironically. Sunlight falling through leafy Champion du Cafe'. On the windowless wall, limply, its feet mere shiny black wood and
branches dapples the pillar in a fashion recalling immediately above the little stores, is a large, turned in upon each other in a slightly crippled-
the naturally dappled trunks of sidewalk clear, painted sign advertising a paint-and- looking way, its waist cinched in tight by a very
plane-trees; energized by lens distortion, the interior-decoration shop; and above that the wide leather and canvas belt faintly reminiscent
mingled spots of shadow and sun on the rest of the wall is covered by a farrago of of strait-jackets, its neck circled incongruously
sidewalk seem to be streaming forwards from a disintegrated painted signs out of which one by a stiff collar. Or there is the equally well-
centre located a few yards behind it; the leafy word stands out—' Argent' . The name on the known one of the better-class store window in
minglings of light and coolness rising up behind street sign beside the lamp-post is Rue de l'Ecole which three impeccably dressed male
it seem to be in motion too; and even the church, Polytechnique'. mannequins in the upper half of the picture
tilted slightly inwards by camera distortion Well, faced with the whole fascinating have been dissolved among the reflections on the
and counterbalancing the inward tilt of the intermingling here of embodiments or reminders window into little more than disturbingly
trees on the other side of the picture, isn't of rest, transportation, nourishment, individual faces (hopeful, sly, pensive), while
sharply separated from the general technology, religion, art (of a sort), education, below and in front of them bulk, successively, a
harmoniousness and rather gay vitality. Hence competition, money, and nature, one is tempted much more solid headless figure and a row of
the kinds of energies pointed to by the massed to say that if there were only a tree there one neatly draped and labelled striped trousers
advertisements on the pillar for concerts, plays, could ask for nothing more; yet that would be to running the width of the picture (W14, A79,
and the Folies Bergères emerge here as miss the peculiar quality of the picture. The C28). Or there are the slightly inane bewigged
complementary, not antagonistic, to the scene is wholly urban without a single organic female faces lost among the shadows and
mingled energies and calms of the trees, the shape in it, yet it is eye-catchingly rich and reflections in the window of a ladies' hairdresser,
sunlight, and the church.29 varied in its textures and local forms, quite (see fig. 9) or the menacing row of headless, white-
Great literature has been described by apart from its almost heartbreakingly jacketed figures, with a headless waiter in the
Ezra Pound as 'language charged with meaning impeccable composition. And when one starts to centre, massed against the spectator, or the rigidly
to the utmost possible degree.'" Georges analyse that immediate impact one realizes how corsetted hour-glass-shaped busts in another
Franju, talking about his own movies, has indispensable to its pervasive air of aliveness are well-known picture (respectively V27 and A77;
remarked that a shot should have a content the those least 'natural' of things, the letters on the V49, A76, and C29). In other words, there
way a glass does (`Il doit avoir un contenu comme façades, alike as information-givers, as gracefully would seem to be intimations enough in Atget's
un verre').3' Let me close this section by made shapes, and as almost wholly abstract work of the fact that 'heroic' city formalism and
examining one of Atget's greatest 'commercial' patterns on the blank wall testifying, along with artificiality, if they enlarge existence in some
pictures, in which everything seems to be the rain, to the operations of nature. ways, can also lead to their own kinds of
functioning to an unusually charged extent even Furthermore, in their 'artificiality', which is at entrapment, constriction, and dehumanization.
for him (A6). I must apologize for the length the same time replete with humanity, they link And where photographs of actual people are
of the analysis, but the picture, as well as being up symbolically with the brilliantly placed concerned, the ones of prostitutes would seem
a complex one, is relevant to my next section too. street-lamp dead in the centre of the picture. to contain some especially sharp and ironical
The picture is of part of an intersection in Wholly modern in form, and wholly the product juxtapositions. A gleaming handsome house-
the rain. To the right, occupying almost the of modern technology, there yet seems nothing front, its lower-story windows all leaded stained-
full height of the frame, are three stories of a incongruous in its receiving equal prominence glass squares, its street number enormous
mildly elegant façade. The lower story is both with the entrance to the church and with between the two upper-story windows, runs the
occupied by a small, gleaming café, its entrance the cold, white, natural light of the sky. It is the whole width of a frame, and it is only after a
faced on either side with marble panels; the product of a system as complex as the first and minute or two that the mind registers that the
windows of the stories above it are shut tight it fills the same basic needs as the second. This is small white figure in the doorway to the far left
behind wrought-iron balustrades and covered not to say that it and what it embodies are more is wearing a thigh-high white dress and little-
by neat lace curtains. On the left of the picture important than they are. Simply, like the rest of girl white socks, that she is in fact no little girl
is the corner of another block, again with a café the scene and like the other urban scenes that I at all, and that another woman, who is probably
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