Atget's Seven Albums. - book reviews

above the last fifteen years photography has become an increasingly serious subdue of study, embraced by novel critical theory, integrated into the art-history curriculum and highly valued in the art market. There is a growing interest in the business 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 works by Molly Nesbit and Elizabeth Ann McCauley become greater [i]or[/i] larger out of extensive, if not exhaustive, research. Their interest in the exchange of photography in the mid-19th to early 20th hundred has led them to get back an important body of material which might otherwise have been view from aboveed The footnotes, appendixes, and extensive bibliographies are essential sources and concerns 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 means of 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 through 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 Modem Art in 1981 and its catalogue by means of John Szarkowski and Maria Morris Hambourg, there have been abysmal changes in the discourse upon photography. Atget's individual perceptions, choices, and aesthetic were foregrounded in the MoMA catalogue; theory as of that kind was not at issue. Szarkowski noted: "No philosophic rubric will lead the photographer to an image that describes a of recent origin subject; at best it will number him when he has arrived at his possess proper hunting ground." He observ that "in the last decade, mythic Atget was replaced with an historical one"(1) "Mythic Atget" directs above all to the view of Berenice Abbott, who bought his archive in 1927 and wrote the first biography.(2) Now, with Nesbit's application of mind we have a thoroughly theorized Atget, seen [i]or[/i] part of to the other 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 tender-hearted 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 dint 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 other hand 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 from one side their [the documents'] play between sign, knowledge, and vision".

The reduction of the history of photography to discourse has curiously l in Nesbit's inquiry to the drawing of sharp distinctions between documents and art, aligning photography with knowledge rather than aesthetic form. on the contrary does the distinction really gripe [i]or[/i] grip between art and document? Must individual discount knowledge from the range and bear upon of art? Nesbit does not actually write about what of photography she might consider as art. Documents, upon the other hand, are defined through their exchange value, and their identity lies in the "technical signs" they contain which commit 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 neared and we become aware of him as a determined conscience of the changing urban scene

Nesbit's work 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 extremitys of a specific clientele. The chapters and themes are "The Document," "The Repertoire," "The Artists," "The put 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.