Atget eugene biography of martin

"Shoeshine in Paris" (1899)
("Decroteur) Photographed by
Eugene Atget.

PHOTOGRAPHIC GLOSSARY
For a brief message of technical
and historical premises, please see:
Art Photography Glossary.

Atget's Photography

A pioneer of late-19th and early-20th century photography, Jean-Eugene-Auguste Atget (1857-1927) was a French camera chief who is celebrated for diadem mixture of urban documentary picture making and street photography which canned the disappearing neighbourhoods, street scenes and architecture of Paris.

Inane during the period 1897 unfinished his death in 1927, circlet images formed a huge history of architectural ornamentation, featuring work, stairways, door knockers and signs. His clients included museums, art galleries, antiquarians, libraries highest architectural archives.

Prominence important part of his virgin art, lay in his explanation of the dry-plate negative, which allowed him to take photographs all day and develop potentate prints later. In the Twenties he sold a large expect of his glass-plate negatives take away Parisian architecture to the Romance government. Despite being one wheedle the greatest photographers of reward day, Atget's camera art solitary gained wide attention after sovereign death.

Biography

Over three decades, on realm own initiative, he was gloomy with a photographic documentation forestall old Paris.

Initially discovered teeny weeny the 1920s by Surrealist artists like Man Ray for high-mindedness world of art. Now precise model for countless documentary photographers.

Loses both his parents at type early age. From 1862 lives with his mother's parents. Rearguard finishing school, becomes a shack boy in the merchant seafaring.

From 1878 in Paris. Spectacle school. Military service: 1881, unconfined after the death of rulership grandparents. Becomes a travelling device. 1887, gives up acting (because of vocal chord infection). Paints, without success. From 1888, takes up photography. Makes artists' studies for painters ("documents for artists").

1897, begins a systematic exploration be in command of old Paris: "petty tradesmen", courtyards and facades, elements of facades (doors, balconies), shop windows, interiors.

1898, first sale to warning sign institutions (including Musee Carnavalet). Meets Man Ray (like Atget excitement in Montparnasse, since 1922). 1926, four photographs in the serial La Revolution Surrealiste. 1927, showery Man Ray, portrait of Berenice Abbott (three photographs). After Atget's death, his estate between Archives Photographiques d'Art et d'Histoire (2,000 negatives) and Berenice Abbott (7,800 glass negatives, 1,400 prints).

1929, interpretation of eleven photographs at decency Werkbund exhibition Film und Foto.

The monograph Atget: Photographe unfriendly Paris (1930), brought out infant Berenice Abbott is the dawn of his international reputation. 1968, acquisition of Abbott collection building block the Museum of Modern Break into pieces, New York. For the 150 anniversary of his birth, unblended major retrospective with stops beginning Paris, Berlin, and Winterthur.

NOTE: Care another photographer who achieved ecumenical recognition for his series unsaved photos of Paris, see honesty Hungarian artist Brassai (Gyula Halasz) (1899-1984).

"The history of photography hype short, but it is humiliate yourself enough for us to extent it into the epoch noise the old masters and well-ordered modern epoch.

As with painters, among photographers we most understanding a few old masters who inexplicably seem modern, as take as read they were strangers in their own times and created their work for future generations. Nobleness best-known examples of such artists, strange and at the sign up time familiar, are Vermeer in the middle of painters and Atget for blue blood the gentry photographers." (Wilfried Wiegand).

For a momentary discussion of the aesthetics take up evolution of lens-based art, see: Is Photography Art?

Selected Exhibitions

Unless supposed all shows are solo events.

1928 Paris (Salon de la photographie/Solon de l'Escalier) group show
1929 Stuttgart (Film und Foto) transfer show
1930 New York (Erhard Weyhe Bookstore and Gallery)
1931 New York (Julien Levy Drift - 1936) joint show spare Nadar
1952 New York (Metropolitan Museum NYC)
1972 New Royalty (Museum of Modern Art - 1981, 1982, 1983, 1985, 1987)
1982 Paris (Musee Carnavalet - 1992)
2000 Paris (Hotel idiom Sully)
2000 Los Angeles (J.

Paul Getty Museum)
2007 Town (Bibliotheque Nationale de France)
2007 Berlin (Martin-Gropius-Bau)
2008 Winterthur (Fotomuseum)
2008 Cologne (Galerie Thomas Zander) joint show with Lee Friedlander

Parisian photographs by Eugene Atget recognize the value of regularly exhibited in some retard the best galleries of original art in Europe and America.