James Baquet

    Eugene Atget (1857-1927) was a French photographer who pursued a then relatively new idea: the thorough documentation of a place.

    Little is known of his life. His parents died when he was very young, and he ended up in Paris, a failed actor. He turned to painting with little success, and then hit his métier: photography. At first his work was prosaic, supporting the careers of actors and the productions of stage shows. But when institutions started purchasing his scenes of the Paris which was rapidly vanishing, he came up with his life’s work. For the last 30 years of his life, his subject was Paris.

    There was nothing particularly exciting about documentary photography, and Atget’s work might have languished in some archives except for one fortunate fact. The young American photographer Berenice Abbott acquired a significant number of his negatives upon his death, and spent a great deal of time and energy promoting his work.

    A well-known artist in her own right, Abbott was part of a circle in Paris that included photographers Man Ray and André Kertész, and she photographed such luminaries as Jean Cocteau and James Joyce. Sylvia Beach, publisher of James Joyce as well as the owner of the bookstore Shakespeare and Company, said, “To be ‘done’ by Man Ray or Berenice Abbott meant you rated as somebody.”

    Abbott even went so far as to emulate Atget. Upon her return to New York in 1929, she, too, documented the urban scene, using a large-format camera as Atget had, and focusing on elements of the city that were soon to be lost to modernization.

    Unlike many artists, Atget wrote and said little about the philosophy behind his work. He let his photographs stand for themselves, but did often say, “I have done little justice to the great city of Paris.” When Man Ray wanted to use one of Atget’s photos for the cover of a magazine, Atget said, “Don’t put my name on it. These are simply documents I make.”

    Not a big name during his lifetime, Atget’s posthumous fame is testimony to his talent. His legacy lives on in the images he left behind.

    Vocabulary

    Which word above means:

    1. imitate in order to be equal to

    2. group of people

    3. been neglected or ignored

    4. profession, especially one that someone is good at

    5. went after, followed

    6. disappearing, going away

    7. counted, was considered

    8. after one has died

    9. commonplace, boring

    10. reversed images on film, used for making prints