Eugène Atget

THE CITY AND THE SHADOW. IMAGE OF CITY IN THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF XIX — EARLY XX CENTURIES.

The universal object, the area of ​​art-concepts, a method for reproducing the space: since the invention of photography, city is the main topic of the photographic image. Architecture was the background and the plot, a point of tension and the self-valuable object. The connection between photography and architecture has created a conditional standard, became the form of meaning of the urban environment. In photography city was recognized as the territory of repetition and monotony, became the reason to doubt in the principles of individuality and uniqueness. Photography, as well as city became the reason to doubt in the very idea rationality. The photo-image saw the city as the area of quietness, stillness and silence. The book discusses the photographic methods of creation of the images of urban space, it explores the main stages of its formation, traces the primary themes, calls the main names and projects related to the urban photography in the XIX- early XX centuries.

*Abstract: Around the year 1900, the reproduction of works of art and the art of the film have had on art in its traditional form. In this piece, Benjamin discusses the profound impact of photography and film on our cultural conceptions of art. He argues that photography inherently lacks essential characteristic more stylish forms to create a visual representation: the aura, and hence that its main use ships from ritual to political. He discusses a shift in perception and its affects in the wake of the advent of film and photography in the twentieth century. He writes of the sense changes within humanity's entire mode of existence; the way we look and see the visual work of art is different now and its consequences remain to be determined. Benjamin devices the concept of the « aura » to explain what he sees as the near universal significance of uniqueness and permanence regarding what we consider as art.

This piece of written work explores the ways in which Photography contributes to feed a voyeuristic society, using the camera as a tool to deliver imagery. The research will be initiated in Chapter I by defining the Freudian “voyeur” and a new possible definition of voyeur/photographer. Visibility will be analysed in relation to lighting conditions supported by the Panopticon theory, access, boundaries and their implications.

The influence of the Panopticon’s and Voyeurism ideas on the film Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954), will be further discussed in Chapter II on photographic techniques used, as well as concentrating on the main character, the photographer Jeffries, who combines professional and voyeur self during the narrative.

In order to apply the research findings, various photographers’ works will be discussed individually in Chapter III, technically and conceptually the works of Robert Frank, Michele Iversen, Nadav Kander, Eugene Atget and Arne Svenson will demystify the photographic voyeurism solely as a perverse one and will reaffirm the close relation between window and the viewfinder.

This Dissertation shares the subject I explore in my photographic serie for the Final Major Project to finalise my third year of studying BA Hons in Photography.

"Este libro propone un doble recorrido histórico-filosófico: reconstruye la “teoría materialista del arte” de Walter Benjamin y examina la génesis y el desarrollo del movimiento surrealista desde una perspectiva totalmente nueva.
Ricardo Ibarlucía realiza no solo un análisis exhaustivo de los textos más conocidos de Benjamin, sino también de su epistolario, los protocolos de experiencias con drogas y los manuscritos descubiertos en la Biblioteca Nacional de Francia. Abriendo un archivo hasta hoy inexplorado, estudia las más variadas producciones surrealistas, desde manifiestos y textos automáticos hasta exposiciones, periódicos, relatos de sueños, collages, fotografías, crónicas cinematográficas, congresos de escritores y pronunciamientos revolucionarios, para mostrar la importancia de los debates a los que dio lugar el surrealismo en aspectos fundamentales de la estética benjaminiana, como el concepto de aura, el diagnóstico sobre la crisis de la percepción, el materialismo antropológico y las discrepancias con algunos de los miembros de la Escuela de Fráncfort respecto de la obra de arte autónoma y el valor del arte de masas.
Belleza sin aura representa, sin lugar a duda, un aporte esencial para la comprensión de los problemas decisivos de la estética contemporánea." (Resumen de contratapa)

A travers le roman-photo "Bruges-la-Morte" de l'auteur belge Georges Rodenbach et les photographies du Paris début de siècle d'Eugène Atget ce travail cherche à définir la place que les mouvements symboliste et surréaliste accordèrent à la mélancolie et à sa représentation par la photographie.

introductory essay, in English and Italian, based on extensive interviews. Sections:
1.The Artist’s Hand (on M's directorial mode)
2. Creating a 'Mapplethorpe' (on M's technique)
3. Formality and Intensity (on M's style, impact of Atget, Michelangelo)
4. Form and Content (historiography)

Estructura y armonía. Ciudades y arquitecturas. Tres visiones fotográficas: Eugène Atget, Berenice Abbott y Amanda Bouchenoire es un compendio breve que reúne tres visiones artísticas a través de las imágenes recopiladas en diferentes momentos y geografías.

Walter Benjamin presents the French photographer Eugène Atget, death in 1927, as a precursor of surrealist photography and points out that his photos of a desert Paris not have been in vain compared with those of the scene of a crime. Several researches has become to highlight Atget’s links to surrealism focusing in his personal relationship with the American photographer Man Ray, who has discovered his work soon after having arrived in France in 1921. This paper shows how Benjamin’s lecture resends to surrealist interpretation of Atget’s images, particularly to two chronicles of art written by Robert
Desnos here recovered, where the metaphor of the crime scene and some other topics used until today to characterize his photos of Paris appear for the first time .

Texto que oferece uma leitura ao ensaio de Krauss, destacando as principais questões nele presentes, e oferecendo alguns breves comentários às mesmas. Ainda uma pequena discussão em torno do Ecrã como espaço do não-discurso (algo que pode continuar a ser investigado, trabalhado) ... Talvez o problema nestas recensões que faço é o facto de fazer muito uso das palavras da autora...

This paper confronts the interpretations of Eugène Atget’s photography given by Robert Desnos and Walter Benjamin. In the first part, it discusses Atget’s reception among the surrealists, particularly his relationship with Man Ray and the publication of some of his views from Paris in Littérature and La Révolution surréaliste. The second part is focused on the paragraphs that Benjamin has devoted to Atget in “Short history of photography” (1931) and "The work of art in the age of its technological reproductibility” (1935-1939). Finally, it introduces, establishes and comments two texts by Desnos to highlight his idea of a history of photography, the place he attributes to Atget in it, and the presence of topical and figures of fundamental significance for Benjamin’s own perspective.
Keywords: Robert Desnos; Walter Benjamin; Eugène Atget; history of photography; aura

A modern nagyváros vizuális reprezentációi, irodalom és fotóművészet kapcsolata a
modernitásban:
A  nagyvárosi irodalom témái között, a nyugat-európai metropoliszok és a hozzájuk felzárkózni vágyó Budapest irodalmi reprezentációi, azok látványra építő technikái kapnak kiemelt helyet. A Balzac és Zola-regények jellegzetes kompozícióit az irodalom és a vizuális művészetek közti kölcsönzések és adaptációk jellemzik. A metropolisszá válást rögzítő, a 19. századi és a 20. század eleji Párizst panorámaszerűen lefényképező fotósok (Nadar, Henri Le Secq, Eugène Atget) munkái a részletekre
fókuszáló, a város térszerkezetét az útirányok választhatósága, az egyszerre zárt és nyitott helyeket bemutató beállításaik miatt figyelemre érdemes víziók.
A téma fotografikus rögzítésének egyik legismertebb magyar alakja a millenniumi fővárost körbefényképező művész, Klösz György. A fotóművész a terek, utcák, épületek modern és új térelrendezésének krónikása, aki a realisztikus megjelenítés illúzióját adja, ám valójában a topikus emlékezet és a retorikai rend konstruált reprodukcióját valósítja meg. Klösz legismertebb kompozíciói beállításukban és tematikájukban is hasonlóak az irodalom városmodelljeihez. Ahogy Nadar, Le
Secq, Atget képei együtt olvashatók az Emberi színjáték vagy a Rougon-Macquart-ciklus darabjainak egyes szöveghelyeivel, úgy Klösz képei a tárcaregények és nagyvárosi karcolatok megfogalmazásaival, például Ambrus Zoltán és Kóbor Tamás ugyanilyen elrendezésű jeleneteivel, térfelfogásával állíthatók párhuzamba. Az utca kínálta látványokat szemléző művészek között pedig, az irodalmi szövegekben és a valóságban is, a modellt kereső alkotó karaktere a festő és a szobrász mellett/helyett egyre inkább a fotós lesz. Az előadás e szempontokat igyekszik körbejárni.

Reality Properties: Fake Estates, an artwork of Gordon Matta-Clark, is today a kind of mapping of residual spaces turned into aesthetic, imaginary, and abstract spaces thanks to a process of aestheticization. Based on this historical case, the article studies the contemporary power of the map by intending contemporary mapping as a form of aesthetic reappropriation and re-evaluation of the cultural, social, and political environment. Also, by studying the concept of literary and visual marginality, the paper continues with the deepening of the Roman group Stalker who, since 1993, realize walks in marginal places, borderlands, indefinable, transient, and polysemic spaces without identity. The study, by offering a new way to read the territory with art, thus considers the map as a polysemic device of aesthetic apprehension that returns the experience and the memory of the place.

La Photographie carcérale : représentation, trahison ou instrumentalisation de l’architecture pénitentiaire ? Carnets du LARHRA, Lyon II, 2012-2 Etudes, sous la direction du Pr. Bernard Hours, (revue à comité de lecture, Lyon II), avril 2012, p. 145-165.

Review of Atget's Seven Albums, by Molly Nesbit (Yale University
Press, New Haven and London, 1992).
One of the outstanding studies of photography and one of the best works of the social history of art.
In her outstanding study Nesbit offers an original account of the document as a cultural form; explores authorship and the uses of history and sets forth Atget the political radical.
Published in the Oxford Art Journal Vol.16, No.2, 1993

Eugène Atget’s nostalgic sense of Modernity – an anachronistic documentation
Eugène Atget: Archeologist, collector and photographer of the old Paris, these are only some of the titles attributed to the famous personality of Atget and his photographic œuvre. The works of Atget contain certain temporal tensions, which will be discussed in the following. They reflect the past, the present and the future on different levels and provide a view from contemporary “modernity” into the past, thus preserving it and transferring it to the future. By means of his works it is therefore possible to investigate the construction of the Middle Ages in 19th-century France and its production. A preoccupation with the vanishing past is no singular phenomenon, other artists and writers like Charles Meryon and Charles Baudelaire examined the topic as well.
When Atget is born in 1857, Paris has already been subject to a dynamic process of modernization and transformation for almost five years. As he turns towards photography at the end of the 19th century, he decides to focus on a specific part of the city: medieval Paris. His discussion of time does not only take place on a motivic level, but on a material one. What is significant is not only the fact that he chooses and documents motifs of the past, but rather the way in which he presents and constructs that past. As he uses a large-format camera, it is possible to state that the so-called modern technique of photography – speaking in terms of technical progress – in terms of Atget is also as antique and surpassed as his motifs. The duality of time gets sharper, as the “passed” is presented through a surpassed technique.

Cualquier historia de la fotografía contemporánea incluye, sin duda, como uno de los puntos de partida fundamentales, la obra del fotógrafo francés, Eugène Atget, quien antes de su muerte en 1927 legó a la humanidad miles de placas e impresiones que documentaban calles, edificios y personajes de París.
Todo está hecho con una sencillez compositiva, a la que contribuye el empleo de recursos técnicos anacrónicos - aun para su tiempo - y ópticos, cuya clara definición y limpieza asombran hoy a los profesionales.
Atget desbordó los límites del documento, al que contribuyó junto con otros desconocidos, testimoniando escenarios, vestuarios, personajes populares, pero también enriqueció con su expresión personal las bases de la fotografía artística.
La crítica de arte sobre la obra de Atget preservada por el el MOMA fue publicada en el diario la Nacion el 4 de octubre de 1985. Luego fue revisada y digitalizada para Ars Kriterion E-Zine en enero del 2019.

La democratización de la fotografía ha puesto al alcance de cualquiera la posibilidad de realizar fotografías con una facilidad impensable hace cien años. Este hecho extraordinario a la vez que cotidiano, que supone poder ver una imagen en diversos soportes, por ser algo habitual en nuestro día a día,-como lo son también las imágenes en movimiento o la transmisión de datos de una a otra parte del mundo-, lo incorporamos en nuestra vida de manera mecánica, sin ser conscientes del valor del documento y del instante que hemos captado que va a permanecer para siempre. Poder mirar el pasado e incluso el presente sólo era posible antes de la llegada de la fotografía por medio de la pintura y el grabado. El genio del artista era el encargado de transmitir la realidad tal cual, o transformarla libremente para conocimiento o disfrute

Abstract: Atget was not an artist. However, we can't help but think of Atget's photographs as artworks for they are as important a body of work as that made by any photographer on earth. Atget's work is central to the history of photography and to the eventual acceptance of the mechanical medium as an art form. He undoubtedly made his photographs with their utility in mind and had no pretensions of Fine Art. Partly because of this, they are clinical yet mysterious and beautiful. They have as much to say about the possibilities of the medium of record as they do about Paris (and that is plenty). No matter Atget's intention, his photographs are highly expressive documents. Accordingly, they anticipate many of the passageways that photographers - who deliberately set out to make artworks - would later follow. Much has been written about Atget's patient recording of the physiognomy of an old and endangered Paris that this vast travelling survey exemplified so handsomely, most recently at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. (The accompanying book is authoritative and insightful and its reproductions exemplary). Curated by Frits Gierstberg from the Nederlands Fotomuseum, Carlos Gollonet of the Fundaci6n MAPFRE, and the Musee Carnavalet's Francoise Reynaud, the photographs were selected and arranged categorically, much as Atget had done with his albums of 'documents for sale'.

Ekaterina VASILYEVA. EUGENE ATGET: AN ARTISTIC BIOGRAPHY AND A MYTHOLOGICAL PROGRAM // Международный журнал исследований культуры, № 1 (30) 2018. С. 30 — 38

The genre of biography is an important phenomenon in the structure of Modern History and in the space of contemporary culture. Artistic biography is a specific material, included in the system of fine arts. Being a presentive description, the material of an artistic biography is an ideological program that defines our views of this or that master. Biography is an important tool in the creation of the artistic pantheon and in the mechanism of appropriation of the artistic status. This work is devoted to the artistic biography of Eugene Atget – one of the most notable and important photographers of the 20th century. His life and story is an important example that biography can be an instrument of determination of the artistic status. The past, collected and regulated, develops a mythological program and an artistic mystification. Biography of Eugene Atget is an important example. It shows that the image, the story of life and the art-program is a single system, which defines the borders of work.

LA TRANSMUTACIÓN ANALÓGICA DE VALENCIANO
Dibujante, ilustrador, acuarelista, arquitecto, diseñador pero principalmente fotógrafo, Adrián Valenciano Alvarez (Costa Rica, n. 1937), ha logrado en carrera posicionar regionalmente la fotografía analógica como un género artístico legítimo y revolucionar con sus obras las posibilidades del medio tradicional frente a las tendencias digitales de moda.
El crítico de arte, Juan Carlos Flores Zúñiga (AICA), examinó su obra en retrospectiva para Ars Kriterion E-Zine del Círculo de Críticos de las Artes de Costa Rica, enfocando la crítica en su integración del dibujo, la acuarela y la fotografía analógica de autor, en un proceso de transmutación que le ha llevado sesenta años de proceso artístico.

Este artigo tem por objetivo mapear algumas das matrizes essenciais para a compreensão da produção artístico-fotográfica de Sebastião Salgado, estabelecendo as devidas conexões entre fotografia e outras áreas da experiência artística: literatura, teatro e pintura.