That’s a remarkable set of talents, and all had a hand in shaping Webb. His love of signs recalls Evans. His fondness for children and Harlem as subjects echoes Levitt. The contents of Abbott’s classic book “Changing New York’’ find a postwar counterpart in his own pictures of the city. A Webb photograph of an elevated train (it’s in the show) pays homage to Stieglitz’s “The Hand of Man.’’ Clearly, he was still finding his way. But even as he was trying different subjects, different approaches, he was surefooted in his pursuit of each.
One could argue that the most important artistic affinity Webb displayed was with a photographer he never met, Eugene Atget. On the basis of the Bowdoin show, it’s hard to disagree.
“I had never even heard of Atget,’’ Webb later recalled, “but when Berenice told me about him it seemed to me that I was doing the same thing in New York that Atget had done in Paris a half-century earlier.’’
Atget (1857-1927) came to possess Paris as perhaps no artist in any medium has possessed a city. Or is it that Paris possessed him? He exhaustively documented its streets and buildings and monuments. Crucial as Paris is to his art, how Atget responded to Paris matters even more. He photographed even the humblest cul de sac as if it were the Parthenon, according it a comparable respect and gravity.
The 10 Atget photographs in the show evince a combination of solidity and delicacy. It’s tempting to call that combination unique, except that Webb’s photographs often display it, too. “After Atget’’ has 32 Webb photographs of New York and 25 of Paris, all taken between 1946 and 1952. As if to underscore just how much inspiration he drew from each city, the show also has eight quasi-abstractions Webb made of his apartment ceiling in Detroit as an exercise for Adams in 1942. They’re clean, competent, and, in comparison to the cityscapes, a holding pattern.
