Eugene Atget: The beauty of architectural photography

 Eugene Atget  (1857-1927) was an architectural photographer who was never recognised in his own time. In the 1920s Atget work would be well respected and the surrealists held his work in high esteem and popularised his work.  The Surrealist;  'found his pictures of deserted streets and stairways, street life, and shop windows beguiling and richly suggestive (these were published in La Révolution surréaliste in 1926.' (Moma: Eugene Atget 2023).  Atget used a bulky view camera and large (18 x 24 cm) glass plates despite advancements in photography and produced an archive of thousands of images of Paris its building, architectural details and events of the time.

Ruines de l’ancien Hôtel de Ville de Paris après l’incendie de 1871, Eugen Atget 

Atget's images are documents of place and how it changes over time and, at this time, the beginning of industrialisation and modernisation Atget's photographs now are valuable historic documents;
'Around 1900, Atget’s focus shifted. The city’s urban landscape had been recently reshaped by the modernization campaign known as Haussmannization—a necessarily destructive process led by (and named after) Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann' (Moma: Eugene Atget 2023).  In 1968 the Museum of Modern Art purchased Bernice Abbott's✱ collection of Atget's work which consisted of over 1000 photographic plates and at least 10,000 images making it one of the largest collections of his work. 

Eugene Atget (1906) Saint-Cloud

The above image of Saint-Coud exemplifies the beauty of the photographic work that Atget produced. Here is the perfect use of the rule of thirds with a leading line that makes your eyes follow the steps through the image, and arrive up in light above with the tall trees and lone bench looking out probably onto a Paris boulevard. This image was made in the; 'formal gardens of the royal palace at Saint-Cloud, laid out in the seventeenth century by Louis XIV's landscape architect André Le Nôtre.' (French, 1921) These later images were more personal to Atget and there is a haunting poetic beauty to the prints which invite the viewer into the frame to share in the experience of the image.  

Eugene Atget Versailles (Faune), 1901

This image of the faune I also enjoy very much, I am very fond of statues in images, the appeal of these stony representations I think is that you want to touch them and feel that they do hold some soul (I am sure that Theophile Gautier believed they did).  In this frame the central position of the statue draws the viewer to look up at the faune's quite angry-looking face, the trees surround the creature and he does seem to belong amongst them.  
 

Maybe my next project in the city will be all the statues I could find in Leicester, I would begin with Reverend Robert Hall (below)!

Reverend Robert Hall, De Montfort Gardens 

Statue of Sicilian marble on a high Cornish granite pedestal.

Sculptor

John Birnie Philip (1824-1875)

The statue was unveiled on 2 November 1871 by the sculptor.

✱Bernice Abbot was an assistant to Man Ray and was a 'central figure in and important bridge between the photographic circles and cultural hubs of Paris and New York' (Encyclopedia Brittanica 2023)

References

Brittanica (2023) Eugène Atget, Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eugene-Atget (Accessed: April 26, 2023). 

Eugène Atget: Moma (2023) The Museum of Modern Art. Available at: https://www.moma.org/artists/229 (Accessed: April 24, 2023). 

Museum of Modern Art (2023) Berenice Abbott: Moma, The Museum of Modern Art. Available at: https://www.moma.org/artists/41 (Accessed: April 26, 2023). 

French, E.A. (1921) Eugène Atget: Saint-Cloud, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/285845 (Accessed: April 26, 2023).