Word: biblioth
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...France's Bibliothèque Nationale, home to more than 5,000 of Atget's albumen prints and glass negatives, is mounting the first major look at the artist's work in at least a quarter century - and the first ever in France. "Atget, a Retrospective," until July 1 at the library's Richelieu center in Paris, marks the 150th anniversary of the artist's birth and the 80th of his death. The show offers 350 scenes of a vanished era: quiet courtyards, bustling squares, manicured parks, crumbling cornices and balustrades, placid river barges and enticing shop fronts, as well...
...formation of a preservation commission to help rescue its disappearing landscape. Without official sanction Atget pitched in, setting off at dawn and working his way outward in concentric circles from the city center. He assembled his prints in albums, which he sold to local museums, galleries and the Bibliothèque Nationale. "Carrying his heavy and outmoded equipment on his back, casually and poorly dressed, he became himself a picturesque figure," write curators Sylvie Aubenas and Guillaume Le Gall in the show's sumptuous catalogue. Indeed, during World War I some passersby suspected Atget of being...
...transatlantic steamers before trying his hand at acting and painting. He retained his bohemian affection for the working man, and - much like French foes of globalization today - worried about the petty tradesmen and merchants threatened by modernization and the rise of big Paris department stores. Thus, the Bibliothèque Nationale show includes affectionate portraits of herb sellers, junk dealers and wine merchants, as well as shots of the horse-drawn buses and cabriolets that were vanishing as the automotive age dawned...
...York City, Atget-style, as they fell to the skyscraper. After Atget's death, she arranged for New York City's Museum of Modern Art to buy many of his prints. Atget soon became better known in the U.S. than in the land of his birth, an imbalance the Bibliothèque Nationale show may finally correct...
Anyone familiar with today's Paris will make a happy discovery at the Bibliothèque Nationale: a surprising number of the streets and buildings Atget photographed have survived mostly intact. Atget's role in protecting them is difficult to quantify - but impossible to deny. The skill and passion he brought to that quest make "Atget, a Retrospective" not just a nostalgic trip back to a lost era, but also a living road map to one of the most romantic cities in the world. It is a city, as Atget realized, that cries out to be photographed...