104 - Eugène ATGET (1857–1927)

Eugène ATGET (1857–1927) Louis XVI-style shop, 3 Quai de Bourbon (4th arrondissement) Louis XVI-style grocery storefront featuring pilasters, capitals, and carved garlands; large arched display windows; “Maggi” and “Chocolat Menier” advertising signs; brooms hanging from the ceiling; a little boy sitting on the sidewalk; a neighboring porch at No. 5 and a “Liqueurs - Beer” shop on the left. Silver print 18.2 x 23.3 cm Inscription on the reverse: Ink annotations, written upside down: “Boutique Louis XVI, 3 Quai Bourbon”; in pencil: “Ph. 19” and a monogram or framed mark [?] Provenance: former collection of Jean-Marie Drot Born in Libourne in 1857, Eugène Atget was a sailor and then 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 Monuments Historiques, 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.