In Focus: Eugène Atget: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum

by Gordon Baldwin and Eugène Atget

Book Overview

Eugene Atget (1857-1927) spent nearly thirty years photographing details of often-inconspicuous buildings, side streets, cul-de-sacs, and public sculptures in his beloved Paris. Yet before his death, he was practically unknown outside of that city. His genius was first recognized about 1924 by two young Americans living and working in Paris, Man Ray and his studio assistant, Berenice Abbott, who recognized the elements of contradiction, ambivalence, and ambiguity in Atget's images of Parisian architecture, streets, and parks. Presented in this volume are more than fifty of the Getty Museum's two hundred ninety-five pictures by Atget, with commentary on each image by Gordon Baldwin, associate curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum. In Focus: Eugene Atget also contains a chronological overview of his life and an edited transcript of a colloquium on his career, with participants Baldwin; David Featherstone, independent editor and curator; photographer Robbert Flick, professor of art at the University of Southern California; independent scholar David Harris; Weston Naef, curator of photographs, Getty Museum; Francoise Reynaud, curator of photographs at the Musee Carnavalet, Paris; and Michael S. Roth, associate director of the Getty Research Institute. This volume of the In Focus series is published to coincide with an exhibit of Atget's images from June 20 through October 18, 2000, at the Getty Museum."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 089236601X
• ISBN13: 9780892366019
• Release Date: August 2000
• Publisher: J. Paul Getty Museum
• Length: 144 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Excellent

As a up and coming architecture photograph I found this invaluable and well arranged.

Excellent value

The Aperture Masters series of books are unbelievably good value. They have been recommended to me by several photography instructors as a way of introduction to the `greats' and big ideas of photography. They are small enough to carry around and contemplate at leisure. The limited number of images is also conducive to study. Atget's images are impressive, varied, often thoughtful or clever, and sometimes stunningly beautiful, especially considering the limitations of the plates of the time. One can imagine the old man lugging his heavy camera and glass plates through Paris in the pre-dawn mist. The accompanying essay was also enlightening.

A superbly presented and invaluable contribution

Eugene Atget (1857-1927) spent almost thirty years photographing details of often inconspicuous Parisian buildings, side streets, cul-de-sacs, and public sculptures. In Focus: Eugene Atget brings together more than 50 of the J. Paul Getty Museum's 295 photographs by Atget, with commentary on each image by associate curator of photographs at the Getty Museum, Gordon Baldwin. Atget's photograph and Baldwin's commentary are enhanced with a chronological overview of Atget's life and an edited transcript of a colloquium on his career. In Focus: Eugene Atget is a superbly presented and invaluable contribution to the history of photography.

19TH CENTURY PARIS PASSIONATELY DOCUMENTED FOR POSTERITY

Eugene Atget (1857-1927) is the undisputed photo-documentarian of 19th century Paris. With studious attention to detail, Atget seemingly photographed every intimate corner of his much-loved city. Leaving the well-known monuments and boulevards to others, Atget instead concentrated on the atmospheric fabric of everyday Paris, photographing shops and window displays, cobbled streets, doorways, stairways, vehicles, churches, amusement parks, street-peddlers and prostitutes. Unraveling the mystery of Eugène Atget's life and work is easier said than done. Now considered to be one of history's most important photographers, Atget was relatively unknown during his lifetime. Posthumously famous for his photographs, Atget in fact made only a humble living selling his prints to architects, artists, and institutions.Atget wrote in 1920, "I may say that I have in my possession all of Old Paris." His systematic method of photographing Paris street by street is spellbinding, and the result is a detailed catalogue of 19th century Paris. The result of Eugène Atget's life's work is gathered here in a heartbreakingly beautiful book for lovers of Paris, architecture, and photography.

breathtaking views of Paris in the past

I received this book as a gift because not only do I collect photography books but I also frequently go to Paris because I love the city. This book is full of full page photos of Paris in the past and has a dreamy quality of the day to day events and sites of Paris and the surrounding areas. It's a great collectible book for photography fans and Paris lovers.