Atget Paris

I thought by the title it would be a travel guide, as in "at get" Paris, sort of a corruption of "get at" Paris, but it was a thick book and I figured it might have some decent pics in it, and

my goodness - this is a must for anybody's collection. In fact, I've half a mind to disappear it from the library, even against my fanatical convictions . . .

Atget is the name of the man, and following my scant memory of my highschool French, I suppose a close approximation would be "Ah-zhay" . . . the book is "presented" by Laure Beaumont-Maillet ("presented" I suppose, means, "edited" or "compiled") and it's published by Hazan, (in France), 1992.

A brief introduction to Atget and his work, which is considerable, and if you love Paris (or even if you just think you do) and if you love photography, or even merely a lover of history, you must have this book for your collection. It's 800 pages of photographs from the start of the twentieth century through the 1920's - of buildings and fences and streets of Paris, a Paris that no longer exists, a Paris that has been swallowed whole by the cabaretic lights of the Ferris wheel and the gilded pyramids and twentieth century neon lights. This is a quiet, staid, stoic, yet still noble Paris. This is the Paris that Sherlock Holmes would have walked had he ever taken the ferry across the Channel. This is the Paris where you can still sense the Hunchback lurking behind some gritty streetcorner. This is the Paris where Henri Murger died at the age of 46 from decades of caffeine poisining, after all his beautiful Bohemians died poignantly and tragically to sacrifice themselves for the art of a Puccini opera. This is the Paris that you really want to travel. Dark and dreary, staid and poignant. This is essential to dreaming.

Whoever Atget was, he really and truly captured the moment. Most of these pictures do not have captions, other than a simple name and a date, but you can tell that they meant something to this man. And more importantly to him individually, what he left for us in these photos is a record of one of the world's most magnificent cities in a specific period of time that will never be seen again. There will always be parts of Paris that echo these photos; as in most cities in Europe you can always see the centuries, the millenia, of history that has occurred there - it's written on the walls, imprinted in every single stone.

But for that period, in all its magnificence, is right here, in this book.

A moment treasured.

VG