Lost streets of Old Paris
Eugène Atget's record of a city about to be swept away
Amanda Uren
1900-1926
Eugène Atget (1857-1927) took up photography because he felt he had failed as an artist. Beginning in 1898, he made it his mission to record the old streets of Paris. Atget saw himself as a documentary recorder, and actually described himself as an "author-producer.” The fact that many of his photographs were taken in quiet areas at dawn was not purely an artistic choice but a practical one: Atget's camera and photographic technique were outdated for the time, and required long exposures. As a result he worked when streets were largely empty.He recorded the shops, streets and architectural details of a Paris that would be swept away by modernization, begun by Georges-Eugène Haussmann on the instructions of Emperor Napoleon III in 1853. The program would not draw to a close until 1927.
During World War I, Atget carried out very little photographic work. He hid his negatives in the basement of his house, and in 1920 he sold them to the French government. He considered his project complete.Atget was a partial recluse and made no artistic statements about his work. But toward the end of his life, his work came to the attention of the Surrealist movement, specifically American photographers Man Ray and Berenice Abbott. Both would bring Atget's work to a wider audience, Abbot arranging for his undeveloped negatives to be processed and published. Atget died in 1927, leaving 10,000 photographs to speak on his behalf.
I have done little justice to the Great City of Paris. - Eugène Atget
Don't put my name on it. These are simply documents I make. - Eugène Atget
He will be remembered as a Balzac of the camera from whose work we can weave a tapestry of French civilization. - Berenice Abbott
