Atget, Eugène

(1857-1921)

   photographer

   Now recognized as one of the major figures in the history of photography, Eugène Atget, who was born in bordeaux, went to sea at an early age, then became a painter and actor. in the late 1890s, he began his photographic career and soon began producing an impressive documentary series on Parisian life: cafés, parks, shop windows, markets, streets, architecture, and portraits of tradespeople. He sold very little of his work and, in 1921, received his only commission—to document the bordellos of Versailles and paris. Atget's photography was discovered by the American artist Man Ray in the 1920s. Man's student, the American photographer Berenice Abbott, recognizing Atget's genius, brought the bulk of his work to the United States in 1927. It now forms the Abbott-Levy Collection in the New York City Museum of Modern Art. As a photographer of what is now a bygone era, Atget had an influence on the surrealist movement.