86 - Eugène ATGET (1857–1927)

Eugène ATGET (1857–1927) Père Lunette’s Shop and Cabaret, Rue des Anglais (5th arrondissement), 1902–1903 A man in a smock dozing in a chair in front of a secondhand clothing store where clothes and petticoats hang; a sign shaped like a pair of large glasses hanging above the cabaret’s door; a little girl on the right; the National Library’s stamp visible in the image. Silver print 24 x 18.5 cm Inscription on the reverse: Pencil annotations: “Père Lunette’s shop and cabaret on Rue des Anglais. (1902–1903) (5th) BNF” Provenance: former Jean-Marie Drot collection Born in Libourne in 1857, Eugène Atget worked as a sailor and then as an actor before devoting himself to photography around 1890. Settling on Rue Campagne-Première, he produced “documents for artists” and spent nearly forty years photographing old Paris: streets, courtyards, storefronts, signs, small trades, parks, and interiors. His thousands of photographs were acquired by the National Library, the Carnavalet Museum, and the Historic Monuments department, which saw them as a record of a city in the process of disappearing. Man Ray and the Surrealists, followed by Berenice Abbott—who saved a large portion of his collection—revealed the poetic dimension of his work. He died in Paris in 1927 and is considered one of the fathers of modern documentary photography.