Customer Reviews

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

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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.

The J. Paul Getty Museum's latest photography book installment - focusing on the work of Eugene Atget, offers the best example of curators creating much ado about an artists work, through speculation and second-guessing. This merely justifies the curator's reason for employment, while boring the reader with a treasure trove of euphemisms and art-speak banter. That we learn more about each speaker's own Rorschach test interpretation of the photographs and less on the artist is not the point. The point is, why does the final third of the book contain this colloquium, when it could easily have been filled with more samplings from the Museum's 295 Atget holdings? Atget's images of Paris are brilliant for what they represent: a visual recording of what he considered worth preserving in pictures. His subject matter ranged from buildings and statues - to interiors, street merchants, and anything worthy of pursuing photographically in and around Paris. Atget's photographs gain their strength due to their simplicity; any further interpretation renders them less for their intent - which was purely documentation. Skip the verbiage contained in "Eugene Atget: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum", and just enjoy Atget's simple photographs of his beloved Paris.

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.

Eugene Atget spent his 30 years in photography making over 10,000 large-plate negatives of the art, architecture, and lives of Paris. His photographs capture the beauty and emotion of Paris in the late 1800s. Atget does an amazing job of engulfing the viewer into the Paris city life. His pictures of storefronts and street scenes are amazingly lit and present a romantic yet true to life view of Paris.
This small but powerful book is one of many in the Phaidon 55 series. The small size is great for carrying around, and even though the pictures are smaller then those in most photography books, they still hold true to the original prints. There is a short introduction and history of the photographer at the beginning. Each picture is accompanied by a brief description and insight into the photograph. Even though the size is smaller then most photography books, the images are still great quality, and for the price you can't go wrong.

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.

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.

This small volume of photographs of turn of the century Paris and its surroundings is my hands-down favorite photography book, and is a revelation of the potential poetic power of photography (sorry for the unintended alliteration...). Many of the pictures were taken in the early morning light so that there are few people out and about; just the empty cobblestone streets, the silent barroom, the mute statuary. There is amazing depth to many of the pictures which becomes positively three-dimensional if you look into them with one eye shut. But it isn't just Atget's photographs that make this book so special; I have other volumes of his work that don't move me in the same way at all. It is the simple and beautiful way that the book is laid out, so that you're only looking at one photograph at a time, as well as the excellent choice and sequencing of the photographs. Even the opening essay is probably the best essay about Atget's work that I've read. It is the combination of Atget's own extraordinary artistry coupled with the artistry with which this particular volume was put together that brings me back to it again and again, more than any of the many photography books on my shelf.

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