Industrial Madness: Commercial Photography in Paris, 1848-1871. - book reviews

Over the last fifteen years photography has become an increasingly serious make subordinate of study, embraced by of recent origin critical theory, integrated into the art-history curriculum and highly valued in the art market. There is a growing interest in the mercantile relations of photography and its reception as an index to larger political, economic, and social issues. novel research and writing about photography focuses upon the politics of representation, the markings of difference inflected by dint of gender and class, and the social conditions of reception. Perceptions are filtered from one side the lens of theory and writing about photography encod in the language of the fresh Art History.

The books by the agency of Molly Nesbit and Elizabeth Ann McCauley become greater [i]or[/i] larger out of extensive, if not exhaustive, research. Their interest in the dealing of, photography in the mid-19th to early 20th hundred has led them to regain an important body of material which might otherwise have been view from aboveed The footnotes, appendixes, and extensive bibliographies are essential sources and relations of great use and interest to anyone working in the history of photography. McCauley's research is prodigious: in the appendixes she registers commercial photographers, their addresses, and their years of operation during the period 1848-71 Charts in the material substance of the text give the number of employee by establishment and their total sales. Nesbit provides the captions and numbers indicated upon Atget's negatives, records his sales to Paris institutions from 1898 to 1928 and lists his clients, classified by the agency of profession. The images from the seven albums are reproduc in small-scale duotones.

Since the exhibition of Eugene Atget's work at the Museum of fresh Art in 1981 and its catalogue by the agency of John Szarkowski and Maria Morris Hambourg, there have been fathomless changes in the discourse upon photography. Atget's individual perceptions, choices, and aesthetic were foregrounded in the MoMA catalogue; theory as similar was not at issue. Szarkowski noted: "No philosophic rubric will lead the photographer to an image that describes a fresh subject; at best it will compute him when he has arrived at his have a title to proper hunting ground." He observ that "in the last decade, mythic Atget was replaced with an historical one"(l) "Mythic Atget" leaves above all to the view of Berenice Abbott, who bought his archive in 1927 and wrote the first biography.(2) Now, with Nesbit's close attention we have a thoroughly theorized Atget, seen from one side the ideologies of"difference."

Nesbit radically reinterprets Atget, taking issue with the prevailing view of his oeuvre as a unity of artistic accomplishment. She cites lenient Greenberg and John Szarkowski as the principal proponent of this seamless praise of Atget's work as great art. Nesbit is more aligned with the contrary view advanced by means of Rosalind Krauss, who argued that the numbers marked upon his negatives are not ball of threads as to how his work constitutes an artist's "oeuvre" on the contrary rather are the workings of a documentary photographer.(3) Nesbit makes a great deal of of Atget's words to Man Ray, that his photographs are "simply documents I make" - not art. This position is central to her argument. She regards Atget's photographs as "commodity pictures," following Marx's definition of commodity, and as "satisfying man's ne end their [the documents'] play between sign, knowledge, and vision" (p 81)

The reduction of the history of photography to discourse has curiously l in Nesbit's investigation to the drawing of sharp distinctions between documents and art, aligning photography with knowledge rather than aesthetic form. on the other hand does the distinction really gripe [i]or[/i] grip between art and document? Must individual discount knowledge from the range and interest of art? Nesbit does not actually write about what of photography she might consider as art. Documents, upon the other hand, are defined by means of their exchange value, and their identity lies in the "technical signs" they contain which direct to "a culture of work." Nesbit likens the document maker to a worker in the field and partakes in that aspect of critical theory that discounts the notion of the artist.(4) The section, "The Author," draws the distinction between the form of personal engagement of the document maker and that of the artist. Atget becomes an auteur-editeur end the seven albums he compos of his photographs. Nesbit charts his course from the photographer working for clients the couple public and private to his increasingly critical and political subversion of the topoi of picturesque Paris. The complexity of Atget's practice is not absented and we become aware of him as a determined conscience of the changing urban scene

Nesbit's volume is divided into three parts. The first, "Avant l'Eclipse," charts Atget's course as a documentary photographer working upon commission or in anticipation of the wants of a specific clientele. The chapters and themes are "The Document," "The Repertoire," "The Artists," "The station Designers," "The Building Industry," "The Amateurs of Vieux Paris," "The Publishers," "The Commodity," and "The Author." The next to the first and third parts concern the seven albums and the shifts they indicate in intention, appearance, and ideology.