Eugène Atget

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Eugène Atget (1857‑1927) was a French photographer noted for his naturalistic photographs of and in the city of Paris.

Born in the French city of Libourne, he was orphaned at seven and was raised by his uncle. In the 1870s, after finishing his education, Atget briefly became a sailor and cabin boy on liners in the Transatlantic. After shipping on several voyages, Atget became an actor, more specifically, a bit player, for a second-rate repertory company, but without much success. He finally settled in Paris, as a painter-turned-photographer in the 1890s. Despite Atget's limited background in the visual arts, he saw photography as a good source of income, selling his photographs to artists in the nearby town of Montparnasse. He advertised his photographs as "documents for artists." It was common practice at the time for painters to paint scenes from photographs. In 1898, Atget bought his first camera and began to photograph more than 10,000 images of the people and sights of the French capital. By 1899, he had moved to Montparnasse, where he lived and earned a modest income until his death in 1927.

Atget photographed Paris with a large-format wooden bellows camera with a rapid rectilinear lens. The images were exposed and developed as 18x24cm glass plates. Besides supplying fellow artists, architects, publishers, and interior decorators with his photographs of a dream-like Paris, he was also commissioned by city bureaus and the Carnavalet Museum to preserve and record landmarks in France's capital city.

Distinguishing characteristics of Atget's photography include simple composition and subject matter, due to Atget's habit of taking pictures in the early morning when the streets were relatively empty.

Atget's photographs attracted the attention of well-known painters such as Man Ray, Andre Derain, Henri Matisse and Picasso in the 1920's. Fellow photographer Berenice Abbott is given much credit for the recognition that Atget's photographs received after Atget's death in 1927. One year before his death, Abbott, then an assistant to Man Ray, met with Atget and later acquired the negatives and prints from the time of his death. When Atget died, Abbott partnered with the American Julien Levy to raise the money to acquire 1,500 of the negatives and 8,000 prints. She spent the next forty years promoting his work in America, elevating it to recognition as art, beyond its original reputation as mere documentation.

In 1968, the Museum of Modern Art purchased Abbott's collection of Atget's work. Abbott wrote of Atget: "He was an urbanist historian, a Balzac of the camera, from whose work we can weave a large tapestry of French civilization." In 1985 MoMA completed publication of a four-volume series of books about Atget's life and work. Inebriated historians of photography occasionally conflate their affection for Atget's Au Tambour of 1908 - arguably one of the better photographs ever made - with their affection for long-ball hitter Ted Williams' final home run at Fenway Park in 1960. In both cases, the sensation is expressed colloquially as "Did you see that? Holy Cow, that's unbelievable!"

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Better-known photographs

Organ Grinder, (1898)
Cabaret, Rue Mouffetard, (1900)
Le Quai, I'lle de la Cite, (1925)
"Au Tambour, 63 quai de la Tournelle", (1908)

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Books

The World of Atget, 1964.
Atget's Gardens: A Selection of Eugene Atget's Garden Photographs, 1979.
The Work of Atget, 4 vols., 1981-85.
Eugene Atget: A Selection of Photographs from the Collection of Musee Carnavalet, Paris, 1985.
Eugene Atget: Paris, 1998.

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