191 - Eugène ATGET (1857–1927)

Eugène ATGET (1857–1927) Porte d’Ivry, a rag-and-bone man in front of his shack (13th arrondissement), 1912–1913 An elderly, bearded man in a white shirt sits in front of a shack made of planks and tarpaulin with a gabled roof; a wooden staircase leads up to the door, with rolls of wicker and bundles of firewood on the ground; the National Library’s stamp is visible in the image. Silver print 18.2 x 23.8 cm Inscription on the reverse: Annotations: “Porte d’Ivry (13th Arrondist). (c) BNF” in ink; in pencil: “Ragpickers 1912–1913 / BNF stamp / From a gelatin-bromide glass negative, cropped / (c) BNF Prints Oa 173c, microfilm collection G045793 / Print made for the film *Les Heures chaudes de Montparnasse* in 1959” 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. 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.