The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Libourne presents an exhibition dedicated to the man who is considered the father of modern photography: Eugène Atget (1857-1927). His work is now kept in prestigious institutions in Paris and New York, but we know too little that this character is from Libourne, where his birthplace is still visible. This will therefore be an opportunity to return to the career of this atypical photographer whose work on Paris at the beginning of the 20th century aroused the interest of the surrealists who took his work over to illustrate their own research.
This exhibition benefits from the exceptional loan of eighty-two works granted by the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris. Among them, the loan includes seventy-six photographs by the artist which will be presented to the public, evoking his documentary work on Old Paris, his inventory approach when he photographed, almost obsessively, a series of door knockers or even the horse-drawn carriages that roamed the streets of the capital. But the exhibition will also show a more sensitive, more poetic facet of Eugène Atget’s work through shots that bear witness to the particular attention paid to the effects of mist, the play of light and reflections. These photographs will be accompanied by archival documents, as well as objects and supports allowing to contextualize his practice of photography at the turn of the 20th century (facsimiles of negatives, view camera) and to highlight the fascination that his work was able to exert on artists, long after his death.
Exhibition curator: Caroline Fillon, director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Libourne, with the complicity of Anne de Mondenard, chief heritage curator, head of the Department of Photographs and digital images at the Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris
Scenography: Benjamin Begey
Eugène Atget, poète photographe
from November 19, 2022 to February 19, 2023
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Libourne
in the chapel of Carmel,
45, Robert Boulin alleys
33500 Libourne
www.libourne.fr
