Eugène Atget. Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, June 1925. Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print, 17 x 22.2 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden.

Eugène Atget. Coin, Boulevard de la Chapelle et rue Fleury 76,18e, June 1921. Matte albumen silver print, 17.3 x 22.9 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden.

Eugène Atget. Parc de Sceaux, 7 h. matin, March 1925. Matte albumen silver print, 17.6 x 23 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden.

Eugène Atget. Fête du Trône, 1925. Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print, 16.4 x 21.5 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden.

Eugène Atget. Luxembourg, 1923-25. Matte albumen silver print, 17.8 x 22.4 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden.

Eugène Atget. Parc de Sceaux, 7 h. matin, April 1925. Matte albumen silver print, 22.9 x 17.6 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden.

Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
212-708-2400
New York
The Robert and Joyce Menschel Gallery, third floor
Eugène Atget:
'Documents pour artistes'
February 6-April 9, 2012

Eugène Atget: Documents pour artistes presents six fresh cross sections of the career of master photographer Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927), drawn exclusively from The Museum of Modern Art’s holdings of his work. The exhibition gets its name from the sign outside Atget’s studio door, which declared his ambition to create documents for other artists to use as source material in their own work. Whether exploring Paris’s fifth arrondissement across several decades, or the decayed grandeur of parks at Sceaux in a remarkable creative outburst in the twilight of his career, Atget’s lens captured the essence of his subject with increasing complexity and sensitivity. Also shown are Atget’s photographs made in the Luxembourg gardens; urban and rural courtyards; pictures of select Parisian types; and photographs of mannequins, store windows, and street fairs, which appealed to Surrealist artists living in Paris after the First World War.

The exhibition is organized by Sarah Hermanson Meister, Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art.

Atget made more than 8,500 pictures of Paris and environs in a career over 30 years, from the late 19th century until his death. To facilitate access to this vast body of work for himself and his clients, he organized photographs into discrete series, a model that guides the organization of this exhibition. More than 100 photographs presented in six groups, demonstrate Atget’s sustained attention to certain motifs or locations and consistently inventive and elegant methods of rendering the complexity of the three-dimensional world on a flat, rectangular plate.

With inexhaustible curiosity, Atget photographed the streets of Paris. Eschewing picture-postcard view, and never once photographing the Eiffel Tower, he instead focused on the fabric of the city, taking pictures along the Seine, in every arrondissement, and in the "zone" outside the fortified wall that encompassed Paris at the time. His photographs of the fifth arrondissement are typical of this approach, and include facades of individual buildings (notable and anonymous), meandering streetscapes, details of stonework and ironwork, churches, and the occasional monument.

Between March and June 1925, Atget made 66 photographs in the abandoned Parc de Sceaux, on the outskirts of Paris, half of which are on view in this exhibition. His approach was confident and personal, even quixotic, and his notations of time of day for certain exposures read like diary entries. These photographs have long been recognized as among his finest, and this is the first opportunity for audiences outside France to appreciate the diversity and richness of this accomplishment.

Atget photographed the Jardin de Luxembourg more than any other Parisian park, reflecting his preference for its character and proximity to his home and studio on rue Campagne-Première in Montparnasse. His early photographs there capture human activity — children with governesses or men conversing in the shade — but this gave way to a more focused exploration of the garden’s botanical and sculptural components following the First World War, and culminated in studies that balance masses of light and shadow, typical of Atget’s late work.

Atget resisted public association with the Surrealists, yet his work — in particular photographs of shop windows, mannequins, and street fairs around Paris — captured the eye of artists with decidedly avant-garde inclinations, such as Man Ray and Tristan Tzara. Man Ray lived down the street from Atget, and the young American photographer Berenice Abbott, while working as Man Ray’s studio assistant, made Atget’s acquaintance in the mid-1920s — a relationship that ultimately brought the contents of Atget’s studio at the time of his death to MoMA, almost 40 years later.

Atget relished the metaphorical and physical aspects of the courtyard — a space that hovers between public and private, interior and exterior — and he photographed scores of them, both rural and urban. This exhibition marks the first time these pictures have been grouped together, allowing the public to appreciate previously unexplored aspects of the Abbott-Levy Collection, which includes prints of nearly 5,000 different images.

Only a tiny fraction of the negatives Atget exposed during his lifetime are photographs of people, yet they have attracted attention disproportionate to their number. With few exceptions, this segment of his creative output can be divided into three types: street merchants (petits métiers); ragpickers (chiffonniers) or Romanies (romanichels, or Gypsies), who lived in impermanent structures just outside the fortified wall surrounding Paris; and prostitutes. As with each section of this exhibition, Atget’s career is represented by the finest prints drawn from distinct and essential aspects of his practice, allowing a fresh appreciation of photography’s first modern master.

Related Publication: To coincide with the exhibition of Eugène Atget: Documents pour artistes, MoMA brings Atget by John Szarkowski, originally published in 2000, back into print. Featuring newly color-corrected tritone images, the lushly illustrated volume presents 100 carefully selected photographs by Atget from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Atget devoted more than 30 years of his life to the task of documenting the city of Paris and the surrounding countryside, in the process creating an oeuvre that brilliantly explains the richness, complexity, and authentic character of his native culture. Through an introductory essay and a brief commentary on each photograph,John Szarkowski, head of MoMA’s Department of Photography from 1962 to 1991 and an acknowledged master of the art of looking at photographs, explores the unique sensibilities that made Atget one of the greatest artists of the 20th century and a vital influence on the development of modern and contemporary photography. 9 3⁄4 x 12 3⁄4", 224 pages; 100 tritone
and five duotone ills. Hardcover, $60. Atget is available at the MoMA Stores and online at MoMAStore.org. It is distributed to the trade through ARTBOOK | D.A.P in the United States and Canada, and through Thames & Hudson outside North America. This reprint is made possible by the John Szarkowski Publications Fund.

Eugène Atget. Cour, 7 rue de Valence, June 1922. Matte albumen silver print, 17.8 x 22.7 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Abbott-Levy Collection. Partial gift of Shirley C. Burden

Eugène Atget, Les quais (hiver), 1923, Musée Carnavalet, Roger-Viollet, Paris.

Eugène Atget, Marchande de bateaux, jardin du Luxembourg, 6ème arrondissement, Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Roger-Viollet, Paris.

Eugène Atget, Éclipse, April 1912, George Eastman House.

Eugène Atget, Versailles, 1922 1923, FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE.

Eugène Atget, Châtaigniers, 1919-1921, FUNDACIÓN MAPFRE.

Eugène Atget, Coin rue de Seine, 1924, George Eastman House.

Eugène Atget, oueur d'orgue de barbarie avec femme, 1889, Musée Carnavalet, Roger-Viollet, Paris.

Nederlands Fotomuseum
Las Palmas Wilhelmakade 332
+ 31 (0)10-2030405
Rotterdam
Eugéne Atget Vieux Paris
September 24, 2011-January 28, 2012

With this exhibition, Fotomuseum brings over 200 photographs by photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927) to The Netherlands for the first time. Atget photographed in Paris around the turn of the last century, when the city had not yet been affected by demolition and modernisation.

His photos show private dwellings, shops, cafés, gates, squares, courtyards, interiors, streets, alleys, bridges, stairs, fountains, statues, parks, gardens, and boats on the Seine. Atget made most of his photos in the early morning, when streets were still deserted. It is only rarely that people become the focus of his pictures, as in the photo series on street vendors on the boulevards, or gypsies on the outskirts of the city.

The image of the old Paris that emerges from his photos is unique, both for detail and atmosphere — romantic and surreal at the same time. In retrospect Atget ia seen as the originator of documentary photography. His work inspired countless other artists, including Walker Evans and Man Ray.

This is the first time that an extensive selection of Atget's work has been seen in The Netherlands. Prints by Atget are extremely fragile and are seldom permitted to travel. This is an opportunity to see this work by a master photographer. The work in this exhibition comes largely from the collection of the Musée Carnavalet, the museum for the history of the city of Paris. Nederlands Fotomuseum is proud of this unique exhibition, which in part came about at its initiative, and that it also had a hand in assembling (including the massive catalogue).

What’s on show? The exhibition contains 229 original (contact) prints (18 x 24 cm) by Atget. The majority come from the collection of the Musée Carnavalet — Histoire de Paris. The photographs were made between 1898 and 1927. Most exceptional are the 43 original prints from the album that Man Ray compiled from the photographs he bought from Atget, in which he saw surrealistic qualities. Among them are photographs of shop display windows, a fair, and even several rare nude studies.

Preservation Atget's photographs from the collection of Musée Carnavalet have been given a special preventive conservation treatment at Atelier de Restauration et de Conservation des Photographies de la Ville de Paris, under the guidance of Anne Cartier-Bresson. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition includes a detailed essay on the problems of conserving Atget's oeuvre, which also contains information of interest to the layman.

Founder of documentary photography Atget turned his camera primarily on houses, parks, courtyards and bridges. He had an eye for architectural details, such as façades, gates, doors, doorknobs, stairs, banisters, sculptures and ornament. People appear in the images merely as stage dressing: only occasionally is there someone standing in a door opening or behind an open window. The almost unreal emptiness in Atget's early morning photos is characteristic of his work, and also decisive for their documentary power. Indeed, the presence of people in the photographs distract the eye.

Amateur photographer Atget did not see himself as an artist but as someone who produced photographic documents commercially for a range of clients, including artists, historians and craftsmen such as furniture makers. They used his photographs as sources, or for inspiration. He also sold his photographs to institutions such as local museums (including the Carnavalet, which was a major client) and the Bibliothèque Nationale.

Atget directed his lens on the old parts of Paris, which had had to make way for the construction of the great boulevards by Baron Haussmann in the middle of the 19th century. He avoided modern intrusions like the Eiffel Tower, or indeed the those great boulevards. That perhaps says something about Atget's personal interests, but still more about those of his clients.

Atget had no training as a photographer, and came to photography only after a number of other attempts to make a life for himself. He started out as a steward on international liners, was an editor and artist at a satirical journal, and aspired to a career as an actor. In 1888 he began to photograph, and in 1892, when he lived in Paris, the first advertisements for his photography appeared in La revue des beaux-arts. Atget's career is more typical of the 19th than the 20th century, when many photographers still ended up in photography without formal training, or as ‘amateurs’.

From about 1900 onwards Atget's work appeared in various publications, chiefly books about the history of Paris. In 1903 eighty of his photographs were published as postcards, including his Petit Métiers. His production was at its height around 1900; several years later he temporarily stopped photographing and again was briefly involved with the theatre, only to pick up his camera again in 1919. He took many photographs in parks. In 1920 he sold more than 2000 negatives to the French agency responsible for historical conservation.

Gallery of the Greats In 1921 he met visual artist, photographer, and surrealist Man Ray, who purchased 47 of his photographs. The photographer Berenice Abbot was working in Ray's atelier as his assistant. When Atget died in 1927 he left behind 10,000 prints and 1787 glass negatives. Abbot took the work with her to New York, and only in 1964, when she published the first photo book of Atget's work, did he achieve fame. Atget was often mentioned by American photographers as a source of inspiration; in addition to Berenice Abbot, Walker Evans also paid homage to him. It was through Abbot that Atget's estate ended up in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where curator John Szarkoswki added him to the Gallery of the Greats by exhibitions and a prestigious four volume series of books (1981-1984).

The exhibition is curated by Carlos Gollonet, independent curator, Frits Gierstberg, Head of Exhibitions Nederlands.Fotomuseum, and Françoise Reynaud, conservator photography Musée Carnavalet.

Eugène Atget, Avenue des Gobelins, 1926, George Eastman House.

Eugène Atget, Rue Asseline, 1924-1925, George Eastman House.

Eugène Atget, Avenue de l'Observatoire, Paris, 1926, George Eastman House.