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| Eugène Atget Shop-sign, rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, Paris ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Shop-sign, rue Montmartre, Paris ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
"Eugene Atget never called himself a photographer; instead he preferred "author-producer." A private, reclusive man, Atget first tried his hand at painting and acting, then began to photograph vieux Paris (Old Paris) in 1898. He photographed in part to create "documents," as he called his photographs, of architecture and urban views, but he supported himself by selling these photographs to painters as studies. Atget carried a large-format view camera, an outdated, cumbersome outfit, through the streets and gardens of Paris, usually photographing around dawn; many of these areas – storefronts and public spaces in nineteenth-century Paris and Versailles – were demolished soon afterward to make way for rapid urbanization."
– curatorial notes, Getty Museum
The Victoria & Albert in London reports that between 1902 and 1905 Atget sold some 600 of his prints directly to the Museum, "as records of architecture, sculpture, and decorative metalwork." Not until twenty years later, according to the Museum, did Atget's work "acquire an artistic status" when it was "discovered" by sharp-eyed Surrealists shortly before the photographer's death in 1927. "Today, Atget is admired less as a documentary recorder and more as a forerunner of modern approaches to photography. His urban scenes – featuring snatched glimpses, tangential perspectives, odd reflections and bizarre details – convey a distinctly modern experience of the city. In 1936, critic Walter Benjamin described how these images operated beyond their ostensible purpose, appearing unintentionally, but uncannily, like the 'scene of a crime.'"
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| Eugène Atget Shop-sign, rue de l'Hotel de Ville, Paris ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Doorway, Church, Montmorency ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Church of St Gervaise, Paris ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Fountain de Medicis, Luxumbourg Gardens, Paris ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Versailles - Statues of Animals ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Versailles - The Palace ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Versailles - Marble Fountain ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Versailles - Statue of Huntress ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Versailles - File of Statues ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Versailles - Statue of Putto and Dragon ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Versailles - Statue with Cornucopia ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
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| Eugène Atget Orangerie on the grounds of a château built at Meudon in 1695 ca. 1900 albumen print Victoria & Albert Museum, London |