Atget's <i>Paris </i>

Atget's Paris. Photo: Eugene Atget.

In the early 1900s, many American artists came to Paris to live and work. Among them was the young photographer Berenice Abbott, who in 1923 became assistant for the master photographer Man Ray. Abbott was a relative newcomer to photography. One day Man Ray showed her some photographs of Paris taken by a Frenchman. Abbott immediately liked the photographs and sought out their creator.
The photographs were made by a virtually unknown photographer called Atget.
Abbott met Atget four or five times around 1925, admired his substantial body of work, and became an advocate for it. However, Atget was in ill health and passed away in 1927. Abbott, continuing her promotion of Atget's work, edited a book of his photographs in 1930. As Abbott's own career blossomed and she became famous, so did the work left behind by Atget.
Who was Atget? What did he photograph?
Eugene Atget was born near Bordeaux in 1857. Details of his early life are sketchy. His parents died early, and he first took up acting, then painting, eventually turning to photography when he was forty. He made his living selling photographs to painters as “documents” to paint from.
Almost every day for thirty years, Atget rose at the crack of dawn and traipsed all day through Paris carrying his camera equipment. At that time photography was cumbersome: cameras were big and required a tripod. Between camera, lens, tripod and film-holders for his sheet film, Atget's gear easily weighed twenty kilograms.
Paris was becoming a modern city, with the old buildings and streets being torn down to be replaced with newer constructions. A new Metro was being built. Atget made it his mission to capture the old Paris with his camera before it disappeared altogether.
What made Atget's photographs so special that even today, so long after his death, they are greatly loved?
More than anything else, Atget's photographs were about creating a document, as objective and clear-sighted as possible, of disappearing Paris. While the subject matter has sentimental overtones - a beautiful old city making way for a dynamic modern one - the way in which Atget documented it was anything but sentimental. His photographs have no soft-focus or other painterly effects - only crisp, precise, unblinking looks at many parts of the city, including its storefronts, stairways, streets, gardens and buildings. He often relied on long exposures in early morning light, lending his photographs a distinct look. His compositions are meticulous and well-balanced, have great depth of field and, above all, are utterly and astonishingly beautiful.
That is why Atget's work is revered: he brought out the possibility inherent in the medium of photography to attain something unique, without any confusion or compromise, and did it in his own style, all at a time when photography was trying to find its identity and many photographers were busy trying to be like painters.
While Atget's work was never exhibited during his lifetime, there have been numerous posthumous exhibitions of his work in museums throughout the world. Thanks in part to Berenice Abbott's tireless advocacy, Atget's photos of Paris are recognized as masterpieces of world photography today.

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