Eugene Atget photographed the city of Paris and its environs obsessively for almost thirty years. He discovered a market for documentary photographs of Old Paris, which were bought by artists as source material for their canvases. But for Atget, the production of photographs about old French culture was also an occasion for making art.
His photographs are unparalleled in their lucid realism and their lyrical response to the living pulse of the city and to artifacts that speak of human life in almost every social class. His images of parks, lakes, shop windows, vendors, prostitutes, buildings, sculpture, street scenes of Paris, go beyond mere documentation to a poetic vision of a time gone by. Atget created some of the most beautifully articulated images of light and space ever made with a camera - an imaginary world.