173 - Eugène ATGET (1857–1927)

Eugène ATGET (1857–1927) Porte d’Asnières, Cité Valmy, ragpickers (17th arrondissement), 1913 A ragpickers’ courtyard under a stretched tarp: a dilapidated sideboard serving as a rabbit hutch, bales of rags, baskets and barrels, two men in caps sitting, a dog in the foreground, the ground littered with trash. Silver print 18.2 x 23.8 cm Inscription on the reverse: Annotation in ink, written upside down: “Porte d’Asnières, Cité Valmy, ragpickers, 1913 (17th)” Provenance: former collection of Jean-Marie Drot Born in Libourne in 1857, Eugène Atget worked as a sailor and then as an actor before devoting himself to photography around 1890. Based 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.