Paris Park Photographs

Publisher's description

Paris Park Photographs features a three-part sequence of images from public parks and gardens in and near France's capital city. Exploring many of the same places that photographer Eugène Atget (1857–1927) visited a century ago, Michael Kolster references their trees, flowers, and plants, watercourses, swans, and sculpture, unkempt and formally designed spaces, tempered by the knowledge that the bustle of the city is only a few short steps away. These views of well-known parks and gardens invite closer scrutiny of the encounters awaiting us at the edges of the well-worn paths defining our daily lives.

Few people venture into the frame of Kolster's photographs, but the promise of renewal resides in the details of his many visual encounters and moments of heightened attention. Each picture seems to speak to us as a special moment in time, and the carefully sequenced plates offer a shifting, dynamic view of these famous places.

Paris Park Photographs also includes an essay by Kolster and an afterword by Michelle Kuo about her time in Paris's parks and the significance of Kolster's photographs in understanding them. The book is presented in an elegant bilingual English/French edition, and its design is inspired by Walker Evans's 1938 classic work, American Photographs, making Kolster's book of immediate interest to photo and book collectors.