Watch John Szarkowski on Eugene Atget

In this lecture, Szarkowski clearly relishes the chance to praise the photographer he confesses is first among equals, Eugène Atget. "I think that Atget is the single most inexhaustibly interesting of all photographers so far," says Szarkowski. "More interesting than Stieglitz or Weston or Cartier-Bresson; even more interesting than Walker Evans, who was his greatest student."