Musical accompaniment: Le Plus Joli Rêve by Lucienne Boyer

 

This is Eugène Atget, the French photographer, circa 1890.

He was born Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget on February 12, 1857 in Libourne to a carriage builder and his wife. Both of his parents died when Atget was very young and he was brought up by his maternal grandparents in Bordeaux. Later, he joined the merchant navy.

Little is known of Atget except the one thing he would have most wanted people to know. He was a man who deeply loved the city of Paris. You occasionally meet with people like that, who have a tremendous affection for a place, usually a large and storied city like New York, Paris, or San Francisco. They love learning all the details of the city’s history and deeply appreciate it for what it represents. And typically, they want to preserve it as much as possible. Atget, being a photographer, chose to preserve Paris by documenting all the little places and scenes that made the city so unique.

Atget was not a well-known man in his lifetime. He never said or wrote anything about his work. The American photographer Berenice Abbott bought a few of his photos. She was a great admirer of his but failed to create enthusiasm for his work in others. Nevertheless when Atget died, Abbott published his pictures. It was only then that Atget’s talent was recognized and his star began to rise. Some admirer of both Atget and the celestials had a crater on the planet Mercury named after him: the Atget crater.

Here are a few scenes from Atget’s Paris:

Street musicians:

 

Brocanteur 38 rue Descartes:

 

Hôtel Cheruseau, Rue Louis en L’Ile, c. 1905–06.

 

Paris interior:

A crowd watching the eclipse in 1912: