148 - Eugène ATGET (1857–1927)

Eugène ATGET (1857–1927) Porte d’Asnières, Cité Trébert, ragpickers (17th arrondissement), 1913 Ragpickers’ courtyard: a wooden staircase with a railing leading to a gallery where clothes, bundles, and bags are drying on the cobblestones; chalk inscriptions on the planks; a faucet; and a hanging hide. Silver print 23.8 x 18.2 cm Inscription on the reverse: Annotations in ink: “Porte d’Asnières (Ragpickers) Cité Rébert [?] 1913 (17th),” the name of the housing project corrected in pencil to “Trébert”; in pencil: “Musée Carnavalet PH 8513,” “(c) BNF print 1959.” 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 “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 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.