Eugène Atget's career was extraordinary. He is considered one of the most important photographers of his time, yet most of his images were not published until long after his death. He devoted himself to documentation, but through the intervention of Man Ray, the public perceived them as early works of surrealism. The photographs of Atget, an avant-garde artist who worked quietly for himself, continue to influence artists in the medium today. The Getty Museum in Los Angeles acquired new works by Atget and is showing them alongside photographs it has owned for some time in the exhibition Eugène Atget: Highlights from the Mary & Dan Solomon Collection. The presentation runs from August 1 through November 5.
Eugène Atget (1857 - 1927) first worked as an actor, but a lack of success soon prompted him to turn his hobby into a profession. So he moved through Paris with his heavy large-format camera and documented alleys, buildings, carriages, shop windows and the inhabitants of the capital. In this way, he captured an era that would become a thing of the past just a few years later due to modernizations such as the automobile. Atget sold his pictures cheaply to tourists and artists, especially to Man Ray, who lived on the same street. Man Ray made the images known among the surrealists; according to him, they showed surrealist traits before this art movement even existed. Atget, however, resisted this, seeing in his photographs pure documentation. Berenice Abbott inherited Man Ray's collection after his death in 1976 and published Atget's works. Atget did not become famous until 50 years after his death. Today he is considered an important pioneer of documentary photography.
