Eugene Atget
(1857 – 1927)
An early practitioner of documentary photography, Atget set out to record his beloved old Paris before it disappeared through modernization. He focused his large format camera on the cities architecture and city life, which he sold to painters as studies for their use. He was known to leave his home early each day carrying his cumbersome equipment and not returning until nightfall. A very private man, not know by many but Berenice Abbott, an American artist, befriended him while obtaining images for Many Ray for whom she was in Paris assisting. (Atget was a very private man not known by many except the artist he sold his images and those he chanced upon on the streets of Paris. He was befriended by Berenice Abbott, an American artist working in Paris and assisting Man Ray, who came to him to obtain images for Man Ray.)