Australia’s first comprehensive exhibition of Eugène Atget’s photographs opens at the Art Gallery of NSW on August 24, 2012.
Eugène Atget (1857–1927) was a commercial photographer who photographed ‘documents for artists’, essentially images of landscapes, close-up shots, genre scenes and other details that painters could use as reference. Later, he turned his attention to photographing the streets of Paris and this work soon attracted the attention of leading institutions such as Musée Carnavalet and the Bibliothèque Nationale, which became his principal clients.
Among the first people to appreciate his talents were photographers Man Ray and Berenice Abbott, both of whom lobbied to preserve Atget’s photographs.
The exhibition will showcase over 200 photographs from the Musée Carnavalet, Paris, and a selection compiled by Man Ray from the collection of George Eastman House in Rochester, USA.
The exhibition is organised into 11 sections that correspond to the thematic groupings used by Atget himself. They are: small trades, Parisian types and shops 1898-1922; the streets of Paris 1898–1913; ornaments 1900-1921; interiors 1901-1910; vehicles 1903-1910; gardens 1898-1914; the Seine 1900-1923; the streets of Paris 1921-1924; and outside the city centre 1899-1913.
Atget used an 18 x 24cm wooden, bellows camera which was heavy and had to be supported on a tripod. The use of glass plates allowed Atget to capture every tiny detail with great precision. Also traditional was his printing method, usually on albumen paper, which was made lights-sensitive with silver nitrate, exposed under natural light and subsequently gold-tinted. Atget’s vision of photography was, however, an astonishingly modern one.
As a result, he inspired artists and photographers such as Brassaï, the Surrealists, Walker Evans and Bernd & Hilla Becher among many others, and he can also be considered a starting-point for 20th-century documentary photography.
The Art Gallery of NSW is the only Australian venue for the exhibition which opens on 24 August and runs through to 4 November 2012. Admission is $10 for adults, $8 concession.
More info: www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au
Left to right: Eugène Atget Marchard d’abat jour, rue Lepic 1899-1900, albumen photograph, George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester; Boulevard de Strasbourg 1912, albumen photograph, George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester; Rue Hautefeuille, 6th arrondissement 1898, albumen photograph © Musée Carnavalet, Paris/Roger-Viollet/TopFoto.