94 - Eugène ATGET (1857–1927)

Eugène ATGET (1857–1927) In Saint-Étienne, a café on Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève (5th arrondissement), 1898 Street corner: “Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève” street sign and number 51; “Dish of the Day” painted on the facade; entrance door beneath a trellis overgrown with Virginia creeper; steps and flowerpots; sign reading “…St-Étienne.” Silver print 23.8 x 18.2 cm Inscription on the reverse: Pencil annotation: “Café on Rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, in Saint-Étienne (5th arrondissement) - 1898 - BNF,” “p. 366” Provenance: former collection of Jean-Marie Drot Bibliography: *Atget Paris*, introduction by Laure Beaumont-Maillet, Paris, Hazan, 1992, reproduced on p. 366. 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 “reference material 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 Monuments Historiques, which saw them as an inventory 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.