197 - Eugène ATGET (1857–1927)

Eugène ATGET (1857–1927) Porte d’Asnières, Cité Valmy, a family of ragpickers (17th arrondissement), 1913 A large group of men, women, and children posing around a ragpicker’s cart in a cobblestone alley: boys in caps perched on the box, a little girl in a ruffled dress in the foreground, a smiling young girl on the right, shacks and laundry in the background; stamp from the National Library visible in the image. Silver print 18.2 x 23.8 cm Inscription on the reverse: Annotations: “Porte d’Asnières, Cité Valmy. ragpickers 1913 (17th arrondissement)” in ink; in pencil: “Photo 3,” “X2” in the center, two vertical framing lines Provenance: former Jean-Marie Drot collection 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 “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 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.