Description:
Street scene, Paris
Left Bank street above the Latin Quarter where Abelard began to teach in 1112. Street had a special charm for Atget, was photographed by him as early as 1898; After WWI photographed at least once a year.
Label Text:
Although Atget did not consider his photographs to be works of art, the younger American photographer Berenice Abbott and her contemporaries admired his straightforward photographs and considered him a forefather of documentary-style art photography. Some early-twentieth-century photographers credit a sign on Atget’s studio door announcing “Documents pour Artistes” (Documents for Artists) as the origin of the name for the documentary style. Atget made his living by providing photographs to painters, cartoonists, theater designers, decorators, and others for use as visual source material, and to libraries and museums as historical documents.
Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève features an advertisement for a “peinture-decorator” (painter-decorator), likely a kind of artisan to whom Atget sold his photographs. This photograph subtly alludes to Atget’s own vocation as photographer-entrepreneur—speaking to the fluidity of the boundaries of what is considered art— and may have provided a clever self-reference for an appropriate client.
MD, PHOTOdocument exhibition, March 30, 2012-July 22, 2012
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2002.119 |
