JEAN EUGENE AUGUSTE ATGET

French (Libourne 1857 – Paris 1927).
Formerly a painter, Atget photographed all that was typical, picturesque and artistic in and around Paris for thirty years. The sign "Documents pour artistes" hung on his door as his images were primarily for painters. Artists such as Utrillo, Braque and the Parisian institutions Musée Carnavalet and la Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris purchased prints as early as 1899. Man Ray, the Surrealists and the German avant-garde Neue Sachlichkeit saw in Atget a visionary modernist outside all conventions.