Eugène Atget

1857 — 1927

Eugène Atget used photography to create an encyclopaedic portrait of Paris. Having moved to the French capital in 1878, he became an early pioneer of photography as documentary, capturing the soul of the city through storefronts and street life. By the arrival of the 20th century, Atget's interest in vieux Paris ("old Paris," rapidly disappearing to modernisation) had become the central focal point of his work.

It was only when the Surrealist movement took hold that Atget's photography began to gain recognition, being published in La Révolution surréaliste in 1926. Atget died a year later, but the American photographer Berenice Abbott preserved his archive, bringing over five thousand prints to New York. Today, several of Atget's turn-of-the-century works can be found exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), highlighting his contribution to the documentation of a turning point in French society.