Museum Home Past Exhibitions Recent Acquisitions: Eugène Atget, Brett Weston, William Garnett, Milton Rogovin

February 3–May 30, 2004 at the Getty Center

OverviewExhibitionEventsPublications
Tavern Lapin Agile / Atget
The Tavern the Lapin Agile, rue des Saules, 1926
Eugène Atget
 
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Eugène Atget

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In 2002 the Getty acquired 28 photographs by Eugène Atget from the Museum of Modern Art in New York to complement those already in the collection.

Atget brought great visual curiosity to the task of documenting the city of Paris and its surroundings, often directing his attention to aspects of the city that go unnoticed—side streets, small courtyards, shop fronts, and stairwells. A step in the transition from the aesthetic of the 19th century to that of the 20th, Atget is now recognized as one of the most influential figures in the history of photography.

Atget chose to depict the Lapin Agile tavern, a hangout for writers and artists, at a time when fog and an angular tree, rather than bohemian carousers, were on the terrace.

Rue Norvins / Atget
Rue Norvins, 1924
Eugène Atget
 
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The displays of merchandise that shopkeepers arranged in front of their stores were frequent subjects for Atget, and he often photographed them from the same angle that a pedestrian (and potential customer) would first encounter them. Here the goods on offer include plates and other bric-a-brac, picturesque Parisian views, and used furniture. In the distance a truck is just visible halfway around a corner.

Fire Escape / B. Weston
Fire Escape, New York City, 1945
Brett Weston
© The Brett Weston Archive
 
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Brett Weston

Christian K. Keesee, who formed the Brett Weston Archive, generously donated the majority of Weston's photographs in this exhibition to the Getty Museum in 2000.

Brett Weston, son of American photographer Edward Weston, photographed such disparate subjects as industrial architecture, city- and landscapes, and natural and man-made materials. Many of his images use creative angles and framing as well as heightened contrasts to emphasize a two-dimensional pattern overlaying three-dimensional space. Weston took this picture while stationed in the army with a photographic unit of the Signal Corps in Astoria, Long Island.

Pine Forest / B. Weston
Pine Forest, Yosemite, early 1950s
Brett Weston
© The Brett Weston Archive
 
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Although he did much of his early work in cities, Weston was particularly fond of natural settings. He photographed along the Eastern seaboard, in New Mexico, throughout California, the Pacific Northwest, and Baja California, and as far away as Alaska, Europe, and Japan.

The photographs Weston made in the countryside are rarely landscapes in the traditional sense. Instead of capturing a picturesque vista, he typically focused his lens on a smaller portion of his surroundings. Here dark tree trunks punctuate a network of pine needles over snow.

Farm Fields, Pipes / Garnett
Farm Fields and Pipes, 1953
William Garnett
© William A. Garnett
 
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William Garnett

The photographs by William Garnett in this exhibition were acquired directly from the artist.

Combining his imagination with skills as a photographer and a pilot, William Garnett was the first to demonstrate the artistic possibilities of aerial photography. This composition—a rectangle split by bold diagonal lines and patterns—is enhanced by subtle variations of tone, seen in the lush field on the left set against the suntanned earth of the unplanted field to the right. From his Cessna 170-B airplane, Garnett has photographed the changing California landscape for more than 30 years in the hope that his art will inspire people to value and protect it.

Foundations, Slabs, Lakewood / Garnett
Foundations and Slabs, Lakewood, California, 1950
William Garnett
© William A. Garnett
 
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learn_more See more images from the Lakewood series.

In 1950 one of the first large-scale postwar housing developments was built in Lakewood, a Los Angeles County suburb. Some 17,500 tract houses were constructed, assembly-line style, on cleared farmland. With prices ranging from $7,500 to $9,500 each, the houses were affordable and enabled a new segment of the population to take part in the American dream of owning a home. Before work began, the developers hired Garnett to document the building. This image was carefully composed to emphasize the strong diagonal lines, while allowing the viewer to see individual details such as tire tracks, utility poles, and stacked lumber.

Cuba / Rogovin
Cuba, 1989
Milton Rogovin
© Milton Rogovin
 
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audio Listen to a discussion of this image and its companion below.

Milton Rogovin

Fifty images by Milton Rogovin were acquired from the artist last year. This group is complemented by recent gifts of his work by Dr. John Knaus and his wife Laura, and David Knaus.

The miner's plight became a persistent theme in Milton Rogovin's work. In the 1960s he visited the company towns of the South where the coal miner had replaced the tenant farmer as a symbol of economic adversity. Rogovin went back to the subject in the 1980s with an ambitious plan: he would portray the international community of miners, photographing laborers at work and at home, first in Europe and then in Latin America, South Africa, and China.

Cuba / Rogovin
Cuba, 1989
Milton Rogovin
© Milton Rogovin
 
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learn_more See another diptych-portrait by Rogovin of an Appalachian coal miner.

This image and its companion above, depicting the same man at work and at home, are meant to be presented together as a single display. This dual presentation method of portraiture seems to have been initiated by Rogovin and became his preferred mode for photographing miners on an international scale in the 1980s. Traveling the world, he photographed the common labor and individual lives of the industrial workers who provide fossil-fuel energy for our postindustrial world.