Eugene Atget & historical Paris

Before Vivian Maier, there was Eugene Atget, a French photographer known for his historical photos of Paris at the early part of the 20th Century. Both photographers have very different styles and they lived about two generations apart, but they are similar in that they were largely unknown during the course of their lifetimes, and their work gained appreciation only after their death.

I recently read Unknown Paris, a book of photographs taken by Atget and studied by David Harris, an independent curator and photo historian who wrote the book. Harris divides the book into multiple case studies describing how Atget returned to a give location at multiple points in his life.

Harris gives a bit of biographical data about Atget to put his work in a broader context. He was born in 1857, near Bordeaux, France. Atchet moved to Paris by 1878 and spent some time in military service and as a drama student. He may have made his living as a traveling actor between 1882 and 1992, although little is known about the details. By 1892, he was a commercial photographer, giving painters photographs for preliminary studies. Within a few years, he concentrated his work on the surviving architecture of the streets of historical Paris. For most of his 30 years as a photographer, Atget focused on the streets of Paris, documenting a large part of life before a wave of modernization changed the city forever. 

The images show details of hotel staircases and their elaborate handrails, as well as wide views of Paris bridges, cobblestone streets, wooden, horse-drawn carriages, hotel facades, interior plazas, public stairways, and urban trees peeking through vast human development. Atget also produced high contrast images of church interiors, public plazas, and the demolition of buildings. The demolition shows an effort of a city trying to renew itself in the same way a forest might. 

Atget is not a “street photographer” in the sense of the word today. There is a relative dearth of people shown in his images, but we see an occasional painter or otherwise solitary figure up at the early hours that he was known to photograph. Despite the lack of people in his images, the content of the photos strongly shows a human presence in most images.

He died around 1927, mostly unappreciated at the time. American photographer Berenice Abbott was the first to take his work seriously and promote him on a regular basis. The work’s importance is obvious to architectural historians, but the world seemed slow to appreciate its artistic importance.

Atget ‘s work without any doubt has a steep historical value, but its worth goes beyond that. It has artistic merit in its own right. As I look at his images, I can’t help but wonder how many photographers living today are producing images that will be unappreciated until after their death.