Atget: Photographe de Paris: Books on Books No. 1

by Eugène Atget, Pierre Mac Orlan, Jeffrey Ladd

Errata Editions' Books on Books series is an ongoing publishing project dedicated to making rare and out-of-print photography books accessible to students and photobook enthusiasts. These are not reprints or facsimiles but complete studies of the original books. Each volume in the series presents the entire content, page for page, of an original master bookwork which, up until now, has been too rare or expensive for most to experience. Through a mix of classic and contemporary titles, this series spans the breadth of photographic practice as it has appeared on the printed page and allows further study of the creation and meanings of these great works of art. Each volume in the series contains illustrations of every page in the original photobook, a new essay by an established writer on photography, production notes about the creation of the original edition and biographical and bibliographical information about each artist.
Photographe de Paris is the perfect starting point for this invaluable new series on great photography books. Published in 1930, three years after Atget's death, it is now regarded as a classic that has influenced many generations of artists, including Berenice Abbott and Walker Evans. Books on Books 1 reproduces all 96 collotype plates from the original, as well as a translation of the original Pierre Mac Orlan text on Eugene Atget's remarkable documentation of Paris at the turn of the nineteenth century. Noted author and lecturer David Campany contributes a contemporary essay called "Atget's Intelligent Documents" written for this volume.

112 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2009

About the author

Eugène Atget was a French photographer best known for his photographs of the architecture and streets of Paris. He took up photography in the late 1880s and supplied studies for painters, architects, and stage designers. Atget began shooting Paris in 1898 using a large format view camera to capture the city in detail. His photographs, many of which were taken at dawn, are notable for their diffuse light and wide views that give a sense of space and ambience. They also document Paris and its rapid changes; many of the areas Atget photographed were soon to be razed as part of massive modernization projects.

Atget’s photographs drew the admiration of a variety of artists, most notably Man Ray, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. Man Ray even used one of Atget’s photographs for the cover of his surrealist magazine la Révolution surréaliste. The photographer Berenice Abbott preserved Atget’s prints and negatives and was the first person to exhibit Atget’s work outside of France.

Reviews

[Bur Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kudos to Books on Books for reprinting this seminal volume. They fatally marred the effort, however, by choosing--for certain spreads in the original--to reprint two spreads (4 pages) on a single page of the current volume. Arrgh!