Eugène Atget

Versailles Bosquet de l'Arc de Triomphe, 1904, No. 6479

1904

Eugene Atget (1857- 1927) took up photography in the late 1880s, turning his camera on Paris in 1898. He captured Parisian streetscapes, shop fronts, and architectural details in a straight, documentary style, in contrast to the Pictorialist trend at the time. Atget made beautiful and sensitive documents and by the early 1920s, up until his death, Atget's works became increasingly expressive, metaphorical, and were championed by the Surrealists for their poetic and haunting mood. Thanks to the support of American photographer Berenice Abbott (1898- 1991), French photographer Eugene Atget became recognized as one of the great early modern photographers. He recorded Old Paris and Atget’s lifespan corresponded with urban planner Haussmann and his famous transformation of Paris into a modern city. Atget documented Paris painstakingly on meanderings throughout the City of Light into the 20th Century. Berenice Abbott is famous for her black-and-white photographs of New York City. She also created a large body of portraits that she made in Paris. Abbott found inspiration in the Parisian streetscapes of Eugene Atget, an influence that would carry over into her work and the series “Changing New York” (1935-38). A major body of Abbott’s work was made during the Works Progress Administration/Federal Art Project."