162 - Eugène ATGET (1857–1927)

Eugène ATGET (1857–1927) La Butte-aux-Cailles, circa 1900 (13th arrondissement) A sunken dirt path lined with a wooden fence and a dry-stone wall at the foot of a grassy embankment, with a streetlamp in the foreground and a factory chimney on the horizon; the National Library’s stamp is visible in the image. Silver print 18.2 x 23.8 cm Inscription on the reverse: Ink annotations, written upside down: “La Butte aux Cailles of the past, circa 1900 (13th arrondissement),” “Pl. 1”; in pencil: “Photo 34 [?]”, “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.