|
French,
1857 – 1927
The work of Eugène Atget is one of the richest pictorial
embodiments of French culture. Working as a photographer
mainly in and near Paris from the late 1890s until his death
in 1927, Atget made a total of about 10,000 individual images.
Over the course of his long career he discovered and progressively
mastered photography’s capacity to transform plain fact
into visual poetry. In the rapid unfolding of modernist
photography in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Atget’s work
soon became the exemplar of the medium’s new creative power.
No major photographer in the half-century following his
death was untouched by Atget’s influence. At his death in
1927, the French government purchased a portion of Atget’s
negatives; the remaining contents of his studio and greater
body of his work were purchased by photographer Berenice
Abbott and art dealer Julian Levy. Carefully looked after
by Abbott, the collection was later sold to the Museum of
Modern Art.
|
|
|
|
