Eugene Atget
To assume that the principal value of Atget's work lies in its sociological or architectural documentation is to miss the true import of his art. Not every photograph Atget produced has grace or meaning. Often he may have photographed with little interest in the subject, only for the purpose of fulfilling a commission. Other photographs obviously derive from the personal satisfaction taken in the pleasure of visual experience or in the recognition of significant fact. Atget was an artist with a highly developed sense of pictorial logic. To experience an Atget photograph is to undergo an adventure in seeing. "It is the photographer's business to see," said H.P. Robinson in 1869. No one saw better than Atget.
The real consequence of his art, however, is in the cumulative effect of the entire body of work. It seems apt to compare Atget's oeuvre to a great Gothic cathedral. Rough and uneven when examined in detail, it is often enigmatic and at times disjointed in the manner of its construction. Like the cathedral, it contains many diverse parts: some shape its main structure, others provide networks of buttressing support, still others serve as fanciful ornamentation. Yet, like the cathedral, it rises heavenward as a whole: a hymn to the greatness and complexity of the human soul with its interweaving of grand aspirations and humble realities. |
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