Eugene Atget: Paris (Masters of the Camera) Hardcover – January 1, 1998

This is my very favorite book of black & white photographs. The massive dragon gargoyle over the entrance to 50 Rue Du Rennes pictured on the left is now in the Garden Room of the Louvre. Nothing else is left of Rue Du Rennes, which ran through to Rue Dragon, which is still there.

This isn't the best collection of Atget's work, but it was a great buy at the price, I thought, and the reproductions (in my copy at least) are decent. Anyone interested in history might also find it interesting to see what Paris looked like in Atget's day.

I have been intrigued by Atget for decades; his sense of grayscale (before grayscale was even invented), the depth of field, the sense of time and place, his aurora of light, the emptiness but completeness of his photos and the romance of an old man trudging around predawn Paris with a weighty camera and tripod on his back. This small beautiful book contains some of Atget's best photographs; printed on heavy weight paper; each photo sharp and clear, keyed to an address in Paris. Wilfried Weigand's superb commentary introduces the reader to Atget's life on rue Campagne Premier, his link to the photographic past of French photographers Marville and Balthus, and, Atget's artistic legacy preserved and brought to prominence by Man Ray and Bernice Abbott who shot three photographic portraits of Atget before his death in 1927. Her straight on portrait of the old man graces the back of this book. Abbott then wisely bought up many of his photographs and negatives ultimately selling them to the Museum of Modern Art and thus bringing his genius to the photographic loving world.