Eugene Atget, Influencial photographer

Today I would like to talk a little bit about Eugene Atget (1857–1927) , was a French photographer noted for his photographs documenting the architecture and street scenes of Paris. An inspiration for the surrealists and other artists. However, his work only gained wide attention after his death.
Approximately by 1890 is when Atget became a professional photographer after being an actor and working with a traveling group and performing in the suburbs.
Atget photographed Paris with a large-format wooden bellows camera with a rapid rectilinear lens. The images were exposed and developed as 18x24cm glass dry plates. Between 1897 and 1927 Atget captured the old Paris in his pictures. You can enjoy in his work from empty streets, shops, trades, windows displays, fairs, parks ,castles and prostitutes. If he emphasized his work in showing the architecture and the urban environment also Atget focus a great attention in   street-hawkers, small tradesmen, rag collectors and prostitutes.

La Tenebreuse

Distinguishing characteristics of Atget's photography include a wispy, drawn-out sense of light due to his long exposures, a fairly wide view that suggested space and ambiance more than surface detail, and an intentionally limited range of scenes avoiding the bustling modern Paris that was often around the corner from the nostalgia-steeped nooks he preferred. The emptiness of most of his streets and the sometimes blurred figures in those with people are partly due to his already antiquated technique, including extended exposure times which required that many of his images be made in the early morning hours before pedestrians and traffic appeared. (source-Wikipedia.com)

The first time I saw Atget's work, I enjoyed the emptiness of the spaces photographed as well as the details shown such as the rough of the stairs and sculptures. Since then, I love photographing empty spaces with no people around disturbing the objects found as the protagonist. I did a series which I called The Lonely Pass in where I am all the time focused on the composition of the lonely space, with the perfect light, generally natural light, being aware of the people, not being inside the rectangular viewfinder. It is like creating an scenography where each element is important for the entire scene.
Well, i just want to finish this little homenage to Atget with a phrase by Berenice Abbott about him saying "He will be remembered as an urbanist historian, a genuine romanticist, a lover of Paris, a Balzac of the camera, from whose work we can weave a large tapestry of French civilization."(quoted in Paris, p. 22)

Rue Boutebrie

 

 

Moulin Rouge