ICP Presents Atget, Archivist of Paris Exhibit

Atget, Archivist of Paris will be on view at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street) from January 29 through May 9, 2010.

Consisting of 31 rarely exhibited vintage prints by the celebrated French photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927), the exhibition highlights an artist also featured in the concurrent ICP exhibition Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris.

Though Atget's dreamlike images of eerie urban spaces fascinated Surrealists such as Man Ray, such photographs were actually part of Atget's decades-long documentation of a historic city endangered by urbanization. After spending his youth as a sailor and amateur actor, Atget took up photography in the late 1880s as a way to make a living.

Though never formally trained, he honed his skills by photographing subjects on demand for local artists who needed photographic models. Following the tradition of earlier French photographers like Charles Marville and Henri Le Secq, he then turned his focus to his surroundings, becoming interested in urban and architectural history.

By the late 1890s, he was regularly photographing what remained of Old Paris after the city's dramatic modernization under the direction of Georges-Eugène Haussmann in the 1860s, paying special attention to those districts threatened by imminent demolition. He created an astonishing inventory of the city's houses, churches, storefronts, parks, courtyards, doors, stairways, and mantelpieces, employing a systematic vision that would today be called "typological." Considering himself a photographic illustrator, and not an artist, Atget earned his living by selling these "documents for artists" to a diverse group of painters, architects, interior designers, publishing houses, libraries, and archives.

Among his regular clients were public institutions such as the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Musée Carnavalet, the École des Beaux-Arts, and the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris. Atget, Archivist of Paris provides a concise introduction to this photographer's subjects and working method.

The works selected from ICP's Permanent Collection for the exhibition demonstrate Atget's ability to fashion compelling images from seemingly mundane objects. Encompassing workmanlike documentation while simultaneously capturing a hauntingly poetic vision of a city in transition, they are a testament to Atget's devotion to his chosen subject. The exhibition was organized by ICP curator Christopher Philips