Page 32 - Studio International - December 1971

`commonplace' items on the table, awaiting wrong about the indebtedness, the parallel still and from the front of that box a number of
whoever will come through the door in the stands. strings run up to the wall above the window. A
background, stands there as something which, There is one last picture that I wish to species of vine climbs up them. Above the level
though transitory and easily disruptible in itself; describe, since it can stand as a summation of of that window, furthermore, at least twenty toy
yet has behind it a whole powerful structure of so much that I have been saying (see fig. 14). animals and dolls, salvaged presumably from
values and activities making possible a civilized It is of the exterior of a rag-picker's shanty on some nearby dump or collected in the course of
decency. And in all of the photographs that I the outskirts of Paris, in one of the poorest of the owner's daily scavenging in the city, have
have mentioned in this paragraph is discernible all the areas of the city. The shanty almost been nailed in baroque profusion over the
that mingling of heroic and pastoral elements certainly consists of only one room, and at its whole face of the wall. Just below the peak of the
that I have tried to elucidate in this paper. I peak can be scarcely over eight feet high. Junk roof, too, is fastened a large stuffed bird, with
shall not, however, enlarge on that point. I will leans against one side, the walls are a patchwork one of its spread wings pointing skywards. And
simply suggest that, if I am right about Atget's of odd-sized planks and bits of canvas, the on the front edge of the roof itself stand yet
indebtedness to Van Gogh, it is worth ground in front, trodden flat, is stony and more animals, the uppermost one of which
remembering that behind the latter stands the barren-looking. A folding chair of the sort that likewise gazes skywards. To complete the
whole Low Countries tradition of painting, and one finds in the great public gardens stands in picture, standing on the surprisingly tidy ground
that in that painting at its greatest, as in front of the open door, while inside the doorway at the corner of the house nearest the camera is a
Brueghel and Vermeer and Rembrandt, one is discernible a battered, rustic-looking milk can. pair of old boots. The picture as a whole is not
sees likewise a loving elucidation of the To judge from the lighting, the square aperture remarkable formally, but that is beside the point
mundane that both brings out its heroic aspects in the front wall of the shanty is the only window, —or rather, in a sense it is very much to the
and permits a harmonious fulfillment of the and probably is unglazed. Immediately below point. The very fact that the dwelling-place
heroic aspirations of the artists. And even if I am that window, however, is a small window-box, itself has been so evolved and organized that no
special selecting by the camera is required to
bring out its symbolisms makes it an especially
valuable—and moving—epitomization of those
basic needs and aspirations that, in Atget's
vision of it, have gone into the making of the city
and that in one form or another continue very
properly to seek outlets there.

VIII
An addendum. There are, it is true, grounds for
satisfaction that photography is still in the kind
of limbo that it is with respect to art as a whole.
The humane tradition of craftsmanship,
significant representation, a strong concern with
human values, and a general absence of silly
egotism, triviality, opportunism, and faking that
one sees in such diverse artists as Southworth
and Hawes, the Brady team, Cameron, Jacob
Riis, Stieglitz, Strand, Weston, Evans, Eliot
Porter, Dorothea Lange, and Cartier-Bresson is
still, fortunately, the central one in photography;
and no-one who cares deeply for photography, I
take it, would welcome seeing the Art News kind
of reviewer laying his hands on it. On the other
hand, it is still regrettably far from a
commonplace that photographs are prints and
belong equally with the other forms of prints in
galleries and museums. And an informed and
sensitive conflation of the major photographers
with the other significant nineteenth -and
twentieth- century artists is certainly to be
desired, not least because of the reassessments of
some of the latter that might result. (I may as well
say in all seriousness that if I had to choose
between saving the works of Atget and those of
Picasso from oblivion, I would without any
hesitation choose Atget's.) Some of the
unfortunate consequences of the slighting of
photography are particularly obvious in Atget's
case, furthermore, especially in the crucial matter
of the availability of his work. For the layman, it
seems safe to say, Atget is now the Atget of Miss
Abbott's World of Atget, Mr Trottenberg's
Vision of Paris, and the handful of pictures in
the Newhalls' Masters of Photography; and if
one wants a reasonably substantial introduction,

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