Photographer 1 : Eugène Atget

Eugene Atget never called himself a photographer; instead he preferred "author-producer." A private, almost reclusive man, Atget first tried 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. Eugene Atget was born in Bordeaux, France in 1857. 

He studied as an actor at the Conservatoire d'Art Dramatique in Paris but left before taking any exams. Even so he worked as an actor in Paris for some time, where he met his life companion, the actress Valentine Delafosse. His early working life was rather varied, from acting to painting and even being a sailor for a period of time. 

However he also owned a camera and was a keen photographer and at the age of 40 he turned to this photography art form for his career. Eugene Atget noticed that there was a demand for pictures of the old Paris and he spent the early part of his photographic career building up a portfolio of work and clients in this field. His work included photographing old buildings, street vendors, architectural details and buildings that were about to be demolished. Much of his work was aimed at artists and stage designers who would use his photographs as visual aids for their own work. 

Atget used only an old wooden 18 x 24cm camera rather than anything modern at the time, as he said that they worked faster than he could think. In 1920 he sold 2,500 negatives of his work to the Caisse National des Monuments Historiques for around $10,238. This gave him the financial freedom to get more personal preference in his work, which included domestic interiors of people of various social classes, neglected statues, portraits and close up work.

Atget died in Paris in 1927, after which a Bernice Abbott who he had taken a portrait of shortly before his death, bought a large body of his work and began to promote it for its pure photographic qualities. She did this tirelessly until in 1968 New York's Museum of Modern Art purchased his work. A beautiful, complimentary post to the last one on the exhibition Eugène Atget: Old Paris. 

It is interesting to compare the styles of the two photographers and the change in photography that takes place between the 1850s and the 1890s. Baldus’ photographs are eloquent in their grandeur and frontality, tonality and texture. Atget’s photographs on the other hand are slightly claustrophobic in their intensity, the camera obliquely placed to capture old buildings, narrow cobbled streets and distant vanishing points. Both, in their own way, are very modern photographers. Baldus’ legacy, as Dr James Hyman correctly notes, was his influence on his German compatriots such as the Bechers, Thomas Struth and, to a lesser extent, Andreas Gursky.

Eugene Atget's Photographs:

Rue Boutebrie, Paris, 1922

Coin de la rue Valette et Panthèon, Paris, 1925