The Museum of Modern Art’s new exhibition dedicated to the French photographer Eugène Atget gives visitors the opportunity to rediscover his photographs of vieux Paris and to fully appreciate his influence on the Surrealists.
Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Berenice Abbott: today it’s difficult to count the number of photographers who modeled themselves after Eugène Atget, the chronicler of the dawn of the modern era. “He was an urbanist historian, a Balzac of the camera, from whose work we can weave a large tapestry of French civilization,” esteemed Abbott. Entitled Documents pour artistes, in reference to the sign above Atget’s studio door, the exhibition retraces the photographer’s work until his death in 1927. “We’re presenting a cross-section of Atget’s body of work, a distilled version that reunites his most famous photographs and exhibits them in a specific context,” explains the show’s curator, Sarah Meister.
Thirty years ago the MoMA acquired a collection five thousand of Atget’s photographs—the second largest in the world—and continues to use them in different exhibitions. Nonetheless, more than a generation has passed since his latest show at the museum twenty-five years ago. The exhibition is separated into six sections: Paris’ 5th arrondissement, the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Parc de Sceaux, the courtyard as an architectural structure, the people of Paris, and Substitutes and the Surreal. “He’s well known in photography circles but less so by the public,” says Meister. “We’re attempting to shares his greatness not only through hundreds of images, but also by letting visitors discover his process. One of the negatives will be mounted on a glass plate and lit from behind. It will be very beautiful.”
Considered a historian by some and a poet by others, we see that Atget was interested in the “little people” and their professions: cabinetmakers, gypsies, prostitutes. “He shoots so that the subjects are centered wherever they appear in the frame,” says Meister. “In Documents pour artistes, we see the duality of the human and the model, but really only 2% of Atget’s photographs depict men and women.” Although a pioneer in his pursuit of the connection between space and subject, Atget was above all a photographer of empty scenes. So it’s perfectly natural that the desolate streets, alleys and glades with which he made his name are given precedence here. They are extraordinary documents not only for their historical aspect but also for the profound influence they would have on his successors the Surrealists. “Photography is a modern medium, and Atget had a modern vision. The idea of systematically approaching a subject through a number photographs and archives is a practice that Atget used adeptly. It’s an approach that many contemporary photographers still practice today.”
Jonas Cuénin
Eugène Atget, Documents pour artistes
Febuary 6 – April 9, 2012 at MoMA New York
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019
