Hockney & Atget

Avenue des Gobelins, Bainbridge Island, Washington (2009)

I don't remember when I first saw David Hockney's giant photo collages that he constructed by standing still and moving the frame of the camera around and building a scene, visual block by visual block.  It was in the early to mid 1980s, when I was a teenager.  For some reason I think it was at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

The work struck me on a couple of levels.  First, Hockney proved to me that there were pictures within pictures within pictures.  Second, it transgressed "the rules" and yet was successful.  Third, it was playful.  While it was breaking the rules, it smiled in the process.  Lastly, there is a strong intellectual underpinning to the work.

Having only recently resumed looking at photography, I neglected it for the better part of the last two decades as I figured out what I am supposed to be doing on this planet, I was struck by how the relative absence of images that could be described as both playful and intelligent out there in Photoland.

Photographers in the fine arts today seem to be predominantly conjuring up images and projects to create a works that evoke pathos. Sure, the ability to transform someone's emotions through images are what artist's strive to accomplish. There are things that photographs do inherently well. With no effort, they create nostalgia, which is a close cousin to pathos.

Atget, Avenue de l'Observatoire (1926)

At some point, I want something more than pathos. That's where Eugene Atget (pronounced Ah-Chay) comes in. One of the foundational figures in photography, he died in 1927, he took pictures of what he liked to look at. He wasn't working on some grand commentary on why modernism is stripping the individual of his identity. He photographed what interested him. [I suspect that he would not fare well in today's art world, but that is an essay for another time.]  What interested him was the spectacle of life around him.  Sure, there is pathos, but the unmanufactured pathos of life.  But there is also humor, irony, sarcasm, and a whole host of other subjects that fell under his lens.  Here is a wonderful article written by Minor White, published in 1956, about Atget, made available through the George Eastman House. (Be patient.  It is a big PDF and takes a minute to download and is travelling all the way from 1956.)