Eugene Atget

Atget's work is unique on two levels. He was the maker of a great visual catalogue of the fruits of French culture, as it survived in and near Paris in the first quarter of this century. He was in addition a photographer of such authority and originality that his work remains a bench mark against which much of the most sophisticated contemporary photography measures itself. Other photographers had been concerned with describing specific facts (documentation), or with exploiting their indivisual sensibilities (self-expression).

Atget enconpassed and transcended both approaches when he set himself the task of understanding and interpreting in visual terms a complex, ancient, and living tradition.
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The pictures that he made in the service of this concept are seductively and deceptively simple, wholly poised, reticent, dense with experience, mysterious, and true.

http://www.masters-of-fine-art-photography.com/02/artphotogallery/photographers/eugene_atget_01.html

http://www.atgetphotography.com/Photographers/Eugene-Atget.html
http://www.etcfoto.com/forum/index.php?topic=5524.0

http://www.masters-of-fine-art-photography.com/02/artphotogallery/home.html

http://thephotobook.wordpress.com/2009/08/