Pierre Borhan

Eugène Atget

Sylvie Aubenas

Luce Lebart

Jean-Claude Lemagny

Hotel de ville (Paris, France)

The works of the great French photographer Eugene Atget (1856-1927) are already internationally known through many books. His role as a highly influential pioneer of photography is less well appreciated. This beautiful new book explores Atget's legacy through his own photographs and those of his successors, names who are themselves legends in the history of the art: Berenice Abbott, Hila and Bernd Becher, Bill Brandt, Robert Doisneau, Walker Evans, Michael Kenna, Lee Friedlander, Clarence John Laughlin, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Rene-Jacques, Bruno Requillard, August Sander. Through a selection of insightful essays and a stunning portfolio of more than 160 photos, Atget's work is juxtaposed with those of later photographers to produce a unique and ground-breaking analysis of a critical strand of photographic history. During his lifetime Atget's work held a fascination for contemporary Surrealist artists such as Man Ray; later Walker Evans drew on Atget's unflinching views of the Paris backstreets to create his own image of urban life, Cubism too found inspiration in the tightly framed spaces of Atget's Parisian streets. Publishing for the first time numerous photographs by Atget - including the newly discovered photos of trees in the park at Saint-Cloud - this book also presents texts by experts in the history of photography.

Atget, the Pioneer

Quentin Bajac

Brassaï (18991984) was the first and is still the most famous photographer to chronicle Paris after dark. Born in Hungary, he came to the French capital in 1924, working first as a journalist and then embracing photography, but it was the Paris of the 1930s that came to form the bedrock of his body of work. Walking the city streets at night, Brassaï discovered a previously unseen world and captured it on camera. He shows us every face and every facet, from tough guys and showgirls to prostitutes and pleasure-seekers, from the bustling cafés and dance halls to the stillness of deserted streets and mist-shrouded monuments. Through his eyes, Paris becomes a world of shadows, in which light, the prerequisite for any photograph, is reduced to dimly lit windows, streetlamps in the fog, or reflections on a rain-soaked pavement. Although firmly rooted in its time and place, Brassaïs night photography is nonetheless timeless in its appeal. Full of beauty, bleakness and insight, these images assure his place among the greatest photographers of the 20th century.

Paris Nocturne ; with 296 Illustrations, 214 in Duotone

Brassaï

J. Paul Getty Museum

Gustave Le Gray

He occasionally made photographs until his death in poverty there in 1884, leaving behind some of the most dazzling photographic images of his era.".

Gustave Le Gray, 1820-1884

Virginie Chardin

Xavier Demange

Presents a stunning showcase of three hundred black-and-white Seberger photographs that offer evocative images of a bygone era of glamour that became the foundation for modern-day fashion photography.

The Seeberger Brothers and the Birth of Fashion Photography

Elegance

Sylvie Aubenas

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