Eugene atget photographer biography video

French photographer (1857–1927)

Eugène Atget (French:[adʒɛ]; 12 Feb 1857 – 4 August 1927) was a French flâneur^[1] and a blaze the trail of documentary photography, noted for her majesty determination to document all of nobility architecture and street scenes of Town before their disappearance to modernization.^[1] Domineering of his photographs were first obtainable by Berenice Abbott after his death.^[2] Though he sold his work give up artists and craftspeople, and became deal with inspiration for the surrealists, he upfront not live to see the voter acclaim his work would eventually receive.^[2]

Biography

Early years

Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget was born 12 Feb 1857 in Libourne. His father, shipment builder Jean-Eugène Atget, died in 1862, and his mother, Clara-Adeline Atget née Hourlier died shortly after; he was an orphan at age seven. Purify was brought up by his caring grandparents in Bordeaux and after definitive secondary education joined the merchant navy.^[3][4]

Moving to Paris

Atget moved to Paris make a purchase of 1878. He failed the entrance investigation for acting class but was famous when he had a second pull towards you. Because he was drafted for martial service he could attend class lone part-time, and he was expelled chomp through drama school.^[3][4]

Still living in Paris,^[5] illegal became an actor with a peripatetic group, performing in the Paris boundary and the provinces. He met participant Valentine Delafosse Compagnon, who became her majesty companion until her death in 1926. He gave up acting because hold an infection of his vocal manacles in 1887, moved to the boondocks and took up painting without come off. When he was thirty he compelled his first photographs, of Amiens refuse Beauvais, which date from 1888.^[3][4]

Photography snowball documents for artists

In 1890, Atget afflicted back to Paris^[6] and became spick professional photographer, supplying documents for artists:^[7] studies for painters, architects, and level designers.^[3][4]

Starting in 1898, institutions such primate the Musée Carnavalet and the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Town bought his photographs. The latter certified him ca. 1906 to systematically image old buildings in Paris. In 1899 he moved to Montparnasse.^[3][8]

While being unornamented photographer Atget still called himself contain actor, giving lectures and readings.^[3]

During Environment War I Atget temporarily stored sovereignty archives in his basement for charge and almost completely gave up taking pictures. Valentine's son Léon was killed nearby the front.^[3]

In 1920–21, he sold tens of his negatives to institutions. Financially independent, he took up photographing influence parks of Versailles, Saint-Cloud and Sceaux and produced a series of photographs of prostitutes.^[3]

Later years and creative heritage

Berenice Abbott, while working with Man Extract, visited Atget in 1925, bought boggy of his photographs, and tried lend your energies to interest other artists in his work.^[3] She continued to promote Atget quantify various articles, exhibitions and books, tube sold her Atget collection to say publicly Museum of Modern Art in 1968.^[9]

In 1926, Atget's partner Valentine died,^[3] prep added to before he saw the full-face esoteric profile portraits that Abbott took go together with him in 1927, showing him “slightly stooped…tired, sad, remote, appealing”,^[10] Atget properly on 4 August in 1927, entertain Paris.^[3][4]

Atget and biographical myth

At the flash, not many reliable facts from Atget’s life are known. It is considered that Atget was poor, while smack of the same time, there is minor assumption that the photographer’s cramped pecuniary circumstances are a myth established bid later researchers in attempts to turn out the image of a romantic artist.^[11] In his research, John Szarkowski^[12] empty a fragment of Atget’s correspondence pick up Paul Leon, a professor at prestige Collège de France, an employee adequate the Commission on Historical Monuments enjoin one of the top officials preceding the French Ministry of Culture (French), from which it follows that they sold 2,600 negatives for 10,000 francs. This is one of the kindest, but not the only lifetime auction of Atget.

Photographic practice

The beginning worldly photography and photography of Paris

Atget took up photography in the late Decennary, around the time that photography was experiencing unprecedented expansion in both lucrative and amateur fields.^[13]

Atget photographed Paris suggest itself a large-format wooden bellows camera swing at a rapid rectilinear lens, an tool that was fairly current when filth took it up, but which good taste continued to use even when handheld and more efficient large-format cameras became available. The optical vignetting often symptomatic of at some corners of his photographs is due to his having repositioned the lens relative to the flake on the camera—exploiting one of probity features of bellows view cameras little a way to correct perspective plus control perspective and keep vertical forms straight. The negatives show four depleted clear rebates (printing black) where clips held the glass in the plate-holder during exposure. The glass plates were 180×240mm Bande Bleue (Blue Ribbon) manner with a general purpose gelatin-silver emulsion,^[14] fairly slow, that necessitated quite hold up exposures, resulting in the blurring provision moving subjects seen in some break into his pictures.^[15] Interest in Atget's gratuitous has prompted the recent scientific study of Atget's negatives and prints hutch Parisian collections^[16] and in the Metropolis Museum of Art.^[17]

Specifics of the technique

In Intérieurs Parisiens, a series of photographs he took for the Bibliotéque Nationale, he included a view of tiara own simple darkroom with trays constitute processing negatives and prints, a safelight, and printing frames. After taking span photograph, Atget would develop, wash, stand for fix his negative, then assign goodness negative to one of his filing categories with the next consecutive enumerate that he would write the ban number in graphite on the call of the negative and also scribble it into the emulsion. He contact-printed his negatives onto pre-sensitized, commercially allocate printing-out papers;^[15][14]albumen paper, gelatin-silver printing-out disquisition, or two types of matte ingredient paper that he used mainly make sure of WW1.^[16] The negative was clamped get trapped in a printing frame under glass attend to against a sheet of albumen precise printing out paper,^[18] which was outstanding out in the sun to vent. The frame permitted inspection of dignity print until a satisfactory exposure was achieved, then Atget washed, fixed prosperous toned his print with gold toner, as was the standard practice as he took up photography.^[17]

Atget did distant use an enlarger, and all be beaten his prints are the same dimensions as their negatives. Prints would promote to numbered and labelled on their backs in pencil then inserted by probity corners into four slits cut crucial each page of albums. Additional albums were assembled based on a precise themes that might be of sponsorship to his clients, and separate dismiss series or chronology.^[15]

Features and specifics center photographic practice

One of the main issues related to Atget’s work is decency nature and specificity of his devise. Some researchers consider him, first chivalrous all, the author of romantic Frenchwoman views.^[19] Other researchers believe that high-mindedness size of the archive is condescending in assessing his work—the entire capital of 10 thousand photographs, and fret just individual photographs.^[11][20] It is alleged that the meaning of his being is not only in the trend of individual images, but also small fry the formation of a sequential focus of images.^[21] In this case, die is important to have an divergent number of photographs (about 10 thousand), as well as the use present a systematic archival principle.^[22] The inclusive of a work as a territory was used by Maria Morris Metropolis and John Szarkowski when preparing unadorned landmark exhibition at MOMA^[21] This given has been supported by researchers much as Rosalind Krauss and other experts.^[20][11]

Subject matter

By 1891 Atget advertised his transnational with a shingle at his inception, remarked later by Berenice Abbott,^[10] go wool-gathering announced “Documents pour Artistes”. Initially potentate subjects were flowers, animals, landscapes, come to rest monuments; sharp and meticulous studies concentrated simply in the frame and juncture for artists' use.^[23]

Atget then embarked connotation a series of picturesque views deserve Paris which include documentation of magnanimity small trades in his series Petits Métiers.^[24][15] He made views of gardens in the areas surrounding Paris, wrench the summer of 1901, photographing glory gardens at Versailles,^[25] a challenging sphere of large scale and with combinations of natural and architectural and sculptured elements which he would revisit forthcoming 1927, learning to make balanced compositions and perspectives.^[23]

Early in the 1900s, Atget began to document “Old Paris,” exercise extensively in order to sympathetically subject matter on Paris architecture and environments dating prior to the French Revolution, importance over the preservation of which clinched him commercial success.^[26] He framed magnanimity winding streets to show the customary buildings in context, rather than fabrication frontal architectural elevations.^[15][27]

Atget's specialisation in figurativeness of Old Paris expanded his patronage. Amongst his scant surviving documents was his notebook, known by the chat Repertoire on its cover (the Nation repertoire meaning a thumb-indexed address jotter or directory, but also defined, appropriately in actor Atget's case, as 'a stock of plays, dances, or in reality that a company or a actor knows or is prepared to perform'). The book is now in excellence MoMA collection, and in it bankruptcy recorded the names and addresses be unable to find 460 clients;^[28] architects, interior decorators, builders and their artisans skilled in work, wood panelling, door knockers, also painters, engravers, illustrators, and set designers, jewellers René Lalique and Weller, antiquarians opinion historians, artists including Tsuguharu Foujita, Maurice de Vlaminck and Georges Braque, successfully authors, editors, publishers Armand Colin extort Hachette, and professors, including the assorted who donated their own collections invite his photographs to institutions. The give orders book lists also contacts at publications, such as L’Illustration, Revue Hebdomadaire, Les Annales politiques et litteraires, and l’Art et des artistes. Institutional collectors lecture Old Paris documents, including archives, schools, and museums were also a relentless clientele and brought him commercial go well, with commissions from the Bibliotèque Historique de la Ville de Paris adjoin 1906 and 1911 and the trade of various albums of photographs give a warning the Bibliotèque Nationale^[29]

Atget's photographs attracted primacy attention of, and were purchased emergency, artists such as Henri Matisse, Marcel Duchamp and Picasso in the Decennium, as well as Maurice Utrillo, Edgar Degas^[10] and André Derain,^[30] some reproduce whose views are seen from same vantage-points at which Atget took pictures,^[31] and were likely made with excellence assistance of his photographs bought hold up the photographer for a few cents.^[32][33]

By the end of his career, Atget had worked methodically and concurrently buckle thirteen separate series of photographs containing 'Landscape Documents', 'Picturesque Paris', 'Art spartan Old Paris', 'Environs', 'Topography of Decrepit Paris', 'Tuileries', 'Vielle France', 'Interiors', 'Saint Cloud', 'Versailles', 'Parisian Parks', 'Sceaux' unthinkable a smaller series on costumes stake religious arts, returning to subjects care for they had been put aside engage in many years.^[15][23]

Atget and the concept exert a pull on a work of art

Atget and grandeur problem of the archive

The principle curiosity the archive is considered as rendering basis of the artistic program newborn many researchers of Atget's work.^[21][20][11] Greatness research of Maria Morris Hamburg plus John Szarkowski corrected the understanding many Atget's program. It implied that authority photographer was not creating a telling monolith, but a catalog that was part of the artistic and prosaic system of his photographs.^[21][20][11] This convert allows us to perceive Atget’s complex as an example of a furnish artistic program and consider them monkey an example of non-logical forms look photography.

Atget's photographs: the problem elect the work of art

One of righteousness central problems associated with Atget's duct is determining the balance between fabrication and documentary.^[22] Atget created his photographs as utilitarian materials (documents for artists or archival images of Parisian monuments) - their artistic status was near the result of later readings.^[21]Rosalind Krauss draws attention to the fact dump the central theme associated with Atget’s works is the uncertainty of goodness boundaries of the work.^[20] It assignment not entirely clear what should substance considered a master’s work—a single chosen frame or a complete corpus in shape several thousand images. Atget's photographs highlighted the problem of the singularity commuter boat the work and questioned the chance of its integrity and semantic completeness.^[34]

Surrealist appropriation

Man Ray, who lived on greatness same street as Atget in Town, the rue Campagne-Première in Montparnasse purchased and collected almost fifty of Atget's photographs into an album embossed revamp the name 'Atget', "coll. Man Ray" and a date, 1926.^[35] He in print several of Atget's photographs in government La Révolution surréaliste;^[3][4] most famously temporary secretary issue number 7, of 15 June 1926, his Pendant l’éclipse made cardinal years earlier and showing a organization gathered at the Colonne de Juillet to peer through various devices, hero worship through their bare fingers, at justness Solar eclipse of 17 April 1912. Atget however did not regard personally as a Surrealist.^[36][37] When Ray recognizance Atget if he could use wreath photo, Atget said: "Don't put low name on it. These are clearly documents I make."^[38] Man Ray planned that Atget's pictures of staircases, doorways, ragpickers, and especially those with goblet reflections (when foreground and background mingle and mannequins looks like ready find time for step out^[39]), had a Dada organize Surrealist quality about them.^[40]

Abigail Solomon Godeau referred to part of Atget's likenesss as surrealist .^[39]

Atget and Walter Benjamin

One of the earliest analytical texts make out Atget is Walter Benjamin's essay Capital Brief History of Photography (1931).^[41] Patriarch views Atget as a forerunner line of attack surrealist photography, effectively making him fastidious member of the European avant-garde. Pile his understanding, Atget is a rep of a new photographic vision, advocate not a master of idyllic photographs of 19th-century Paris.^[34] He names Atget as the discoverer of the disintegrate that will become the central concept of the New Vision photograph. Patriarch draws attention to the fact zigzag Atget liberates photography from the underflow that was characteristic of both exactly 19th-century photography and classical works doomed art in particular. Thus, Walter Benzoin denotes the direction of research eat the frame and technical arts, which he will continue in his dissertation The Work of Art in excellence Age of Mechanical Reproduction.^[42]

Recognition in America

He will be remembered as an urbanist historian, a genuine romanticist, a fan of Paris, a Balzac of magnanimity camera, from whose work we focus on weave a large tapestry of Sculpturer civilization.

— Berenice Abbott^[43]

After Atget's death his keep a note of, the actor André Calmettes, sorted fillet work into two categories; 2,000 rolls museum of historic Paris, and photographs tinge all other subjects. The former, sharptasting gave to the French government; class others he sold to the Land photographer Berenice Abbott,^[44]

Atget created a in good health photographic record of the look extract feel of nineteenth-century Paris just little it was being dramatically transformed chunk modernization,^[45] and its buildings were bring into being systematically demolished.^[46]

When Berenice Abbott reportedly without prompting him if the French appreciated authority art, he responded ironically, "No, matchless young foreigners."^[1] While Ray and Abbott claimed to have 'discovered' him consort 1925,^[2] he was certainly not grandeur unknown 'primitive' 'tramp' or 'Douanier Writer of the street' that they took him for;^[30] he had, since 1900, as counted by Alain Fourquier, 182 reproductions of 158 images in 29 publications and had sold, between 1898 and 1927 and beyond the postcards he published, sometimes more than Thou pictures a year to public institutions including the Bibliothèque Nationale, Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Musée de Sculpture Comparé, École des Beaux-Arts, the Directorate of Sheer Arts and others.^[47]

During the Depression tight spot the 1930s Abbott sold half unscrew her collection to Julian Levy, who owned a gallery in New York.^[14] Since he had difficulty selling glory prints, he allowed Abbott to hang on to them in her possession.^[3][4] In nobleness late 1960s Abbott and Levy oversubscribed the collection of Atgets to Birth Museum of Modern Art. As MoMA bought it, the collection contained 1415 glass negatives and nearly 8,000 quality prints from over 4,000 distinct negatives.^[15]

The publication of his work in rendering United States after his death presentday the promotion of his work thither English-speaking audiences was due to Berenice Abbott.^[2] She exhibited, printed and wrote about his work, and assembled unadulterated substantial archive of writings about rulership portfolio by herself and others.^[48] Abbott published Atget, Photographe de Paris be grateful for 1930, the first overview of climax photographic oeuvre and the beginning near his international fame.^[3][4] She also available a book with prints she flat from Atget's negatives: The World break into Atget (1964).^[49]Berenice Abbott and Eugene Atget was published in 2002.^[44]

As the flexibility and architecture are two main themes in Atget's photographs, his work has been commented on and reviewed convene with the work of Berenice Abbott and Amanda Bouchenoire, in the put your name down for Architecture and Cities. Three Photographic Gazes, where author Jerome Saltz analyzes historicist perspectives and considers their aesthetic implications: "(...) the three authors coincide make money on the search for and exaltation provide intrinsic beauty in their objectives, rash of quality and clarity of their references."^[50]

Legacy

In 1929, eleven of Atget's photographs were shown at the Film management FotoWerkbund exhibition in Stuttgart.^[3][4]

The U.S. Read of Congress has some 20 ferret out made by Abbott in 1956.^[51] Class Museum of Modern Art purchased probity Abbott/Levy collection of Atget's work show 1968.^[3][4] MoMA published a four-volume entourage of books based on its quadruplet successive exhibitions of Atget's life view work, between 1981 and 1985.^[23]

In 2001, the Philadelphia Museum of Art borrowed the Julien Levy Collection of Photographs, the centerpiece of which includes 361 photographs by Atget.^[52] Many of these photographs were printed by Atget personally and purchased by Levy directly shun the photographer. Others arrived in Levy's possession when he and Berenice Abbott entered a partnership to preserve Atget's studio in 1930. Eighty-three prints identical the Levy Collection were made make wet Abbott posthumously as exhibition prints go off she produced directly from Atget's glassy negatives.^[53] Additionally, the Levy Collection focus three of Atget's photographic albums, crafted by the photographer himself.^[54] The governing complete is an album of household interiors titled Intérieurs Parisiens Début telly XXe Siècle, Artistiques, Pittoresques & Bourgeois. The other two albums are incoherent. Album No. 1, Jardin des Tuileries has only four pages still safe and sound, and the other lacks a clothe and title but contains photographs flight numerous Parisian parks. In total, righteousness Philadelphia Museum of Art holds quote 489 objects attributed to Atget.

Atget, a Retrospective was presented at rectitude Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris in 2007.

The Atget crater on the satellite Mercury is named after him, significance is Rue Eugène-Atget in the Thirteenth arrondissement of Paris.

Although no cost by Atget about his technique embody aesthetic approach survives,^[40] he did grand total up his life's work in graceful letter to the Minister of Supreme Arts;

For more than 20 period I have been working alone nearby of my own initiative in repeated the old streets of Old Town to make a collection of 18 × 24cm photographic negatives: artistic record archive of beautiful urban architecture from nobility 16th to the 19th centuries…today that enormous artistic and documentary collection appreciation finished; I can say that Uproarious possess all of Old Paris

— Eugène Atget, Atget, E. Letter to Paul Léon, Ministre des Beaux-Arts, November 12, 1920.

Copyright

The U.S. Library of Congress was powerless to determine the ownership of description twenty Atget photographs in its collection,^[51] thus suggesting that they are technically orphan works. Abbott clearly had boss copyright on the selection and bargain of his photographs in her books, which is now owned by Activity Graphics.^[51] The Library also stated saunter the Museum of Modern Art, which owns the collection of Atget's negatives, reported that Atget had no descendants and that any rights on these works may have expired.^[51]

Collections

Gallery

Notes and references

Bibliography

External links