One of the best photography exhibits of the season is currently on view at the Pace MacGill Gallery on East 57th Street. It features a fine selection of vintage prints by the iconic French photographer Eugène Atget.
In a certain sense, Atget's story resembles that of Vivian Maier about whom I wrote in my last post. Both toiled in obscurity for the greater part of their lives and both died without having received the recognition justly due them. It was only after they had passed that their work was rescued from oblivion by dedicated individuals who recognized its worth and set about preserving it. John Maloof's recent efforts on Maier's behalf find their parallel in those made by Berenice Abbott when, with the assistance of gallery owner Julien Levy, she rescued a huge portion of Atget's work from almost certain destruction following the photographer's death in 1927. Although Atget himself had managed to sell over 2,000 of his negatives to the French government in 1920, it is unlikely he would be remembered today had it not been for Abbott's intervention.
Despite these superficial similarities, the differences that exist between Atget and Maier are much more striking. While his Wikipedia biography may refer to him somewhat romantically as a flâneur, Atget was not a hobbyist haphazardly strolling the streets of Paris with camera in hand. He was a professional. It was through photography that he earned his living however meager that may have been. He was actually commissioned by the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris in 1906 to document the city's old buildings before they were destroyed by modernization. In this, he followed in the footsteps of Charles Marville who decades before had been employed by Napoleon III to complete a similar task during Haussmann's renovation of the city in the 1860's. Atget differed significantly from Marville, however, to the extent that he brought to his photography a much more personal sensibility than could be found in the latter's documentary efforts no matter how technically accomplished these may have been.
Perhaps the most concise summary of Atget's achievement can be found in the short biographical article on MOMA's website:
"Atget’s best work is a poetic transformation of the ordinary by a subtle and knowing eye well served by photography’s reportorial fidelity. His transcendent, haunting works transposed photography’s function from the arena of 19th-century commercial documentation into the realm of art. This legacy, posthumously heralded as paralleling the rejection by ‘art’ photographers of Pictorialism and the return to the straight, unmanipulated approach, passed into the tradition of modern photographic history..."
The photographs shown at the Pace MacGill exhibit are, according to the press release, from a single collection assembled over a twenty year period. They are a mixture of albumen silver prints and gelatin silver chloride prints. There are a "number of early exhibition prints on the original mount used by Julien Levy and Berenice Abbott in the early exhibitions..." Among the prints shown are some of Atget's finest and best known works. These include Joueur d'orgue (1898-1899), Avenue des Gobelins (1925), Rue Asselin, La Villette (1924-1925), Boulevard de Bonne-Nouvelle (1926) and Foire des Invalides (1913) as well as studies of Versailles and Parc St. Cloud. These and the other prints on display reveal the photographer at the height of his powers and deserve to be seen by anyone with a serious interest in the history of photography.
The exhibit continues through January 3, 2015.
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