Finally managed to get my hands on Atget by John Szarkowski.

Eugène Atget is my favorite photographer, arguably because I came across this book many years ago either on the internet, or in a library or somewhere I could not take away a copy of my own. It had a profound influence on me, as indeed did Atget on such luminaries as Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott (who I believe took the picture above), Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander and others.

Photobookjournal.com describes it as follows:

I have a broad collection of photographic books that have had an image or two of Atget’s photographs and I really wanted to have a dedicated resource to read and study to further understand Atget’s way of looking at his environment. There are a number of alternative hardcover book options for Atgets photographs but to have access a paring of Atget’s photographs with the insights of Szarkowski and the beautifully printing and binding by MOMA in Italy was just too hard to resist.

The images are all well displayed in the book with a Atget photograph on the right and on the opposite spread the commentary about the photograph by Szarkowski.

So I have now traveled throught this book many times. At first I had hoped for a little more analysis of the structure of the photograph from Szarkowski and then I realized that he was helping to frame the context of the photograph as much as describing the photographs attributes.

The book sequences Atget photographs chronologically taking you on a historical journey through the development of Atget’s body of work. You come to understand that even Bernice Abbott, who became the champion of Atget’s photographs, did not get that close to the photographer himself.

So in conclusion this a book that I can really recommend.

Me too.

The summary on Amazon.com reads:

An exploration of photography in 120 photographs.

In On Photographs, curator and writer David Campany presents an exploration of photography in 120 photographs. Proceeding not by chronology or genre or photographer, Campany’s eclectic selection unfolds according to its own logic. We see work by Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Eggleston, Helen Levitt, Garry Winogrand, Yves Louise Lawler, Andreas Gursky, and Rineke Dijkstra. There is fashion photography by William Klein, one of Vivian Maier’s contact sheets, and a carefully staged scene by Gregory Crewdson, as well as images culled from magazines and advertisements.

Each ofthe 120 photographs is accompanied by Campany’s lucid and incisive commentary, considering the history of that image and its creator, interpreting its content and meaning, and connecting and contextualizing it with visual culture. Image by image, we absorb and appreciate Campany’s complex yet playful take on photography and its history.

The title, On Photographs, alludes to Susan Sontag’s influential and groundbreaking On Photography. As an undergraduate, Campany met Sontag and questioned her assessment of photography without including specific photographs. Sontag suggested that someday Campany could write his own book on the subject, titled On Photographs. Now he has.

It’s a useful book with lots on information on the photographs and the photographers, many of whom I’d previously never heard of. It’s not a book I would try to read from beginning to end. Rather it’s something to pick up and browse through when you have a few minutes to spare.