188 - Eugène ATGET (1857–1927)

Eugène ATGET (1857–1927) Porte d’Italie, a family of carters in front of their wagon (13th arrondissement), 1912 Family posing in front of a covered trailer: a little girl in an apron, a young woman in a white blouse, a woman holding a baby, children in the doorway, a man in a hat seated on the right; a ladder, a basin, and a cat in the foreground. Silver print 18.2 x 23.8 cm Inscription on the reverse: Annotations: “Porte d’Italie 1912 (13th arrondissement)” in ink; in pencil: “Photo 4,” “X2” in the center, two vertical framing lines 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 photographed old Paris for nearly forty years: 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.