Eugène Atget was a French photographer best known for his photographs of the architecture and streets of Paris. He took up photography in the late 1880s and supplied studies for painters, architects, and stage designers. Atget began shooting Paris in 1898 using a large format view camera to capture the city in detail. His photographs, many of which were taken at dawn, are notable for their diffuse light and wide views that give a sense of space and ambience. They also document Paris and its rapid changes; many of the areas Atget photographed were soon to be razed as part of massive modernization projects.

Atget , created a comprehensive and unique way to create a lived portrait of that city in the modern era his photography coincided with a series of developments within the medium. The 1880s was a growth for professional and amateur photography and commercial and industrial applications expanded. These works depict rural scenes, plants, and farming technology and they were made as studies for painters and illustrators. Early 1890s, Atget was working in Paris, but it was not until later he changed the focus of his photographic business to concentrate on the city of Paris, with inexhaustible interest, and one that continued to nourish and enrich his work. Around 1900, Atget’s photography focus shifted as the city’s urban landscape had been recently reshaped by the modernization campaign transformed into wide avenues and public parks. 

Atget’s feeling for vieux Paris had been an integral part of his practice of making documents for other artists, but around 1900 that interest took center stage, as he established himself as a specialist in pictures of Paris. Indeed, his calling card from the period Those changes, in turn, kindled a broad interest in vieux Paris (“old Paris”), the capital in its pre-Revolutionary, 18th-century form. 

Eugène Atget born in 1857 was known best for his photography of the disappearing architecture of ‘Old Paris’, project. This projects was a focus on his career from 1897  to the 1920s. He took up photography as a professional in the late 1880s, and he wanted to capture the essence of details of his life prior were sufficient. He had a photographic ability in setting a scene. His works shows urban solitude and emptiness although there are hints of life, empty chairs, tire tracks in well-worn dirt roads these are photographs taken and just missed out on something, action that has just unfolded. Atget's photographs appear as devoid is down to the method he used to shoot. He used dry plate photography and they needed a longer amount of time to expose to let light in to form a picture. This meant that in the pictures the people would become blurs or outlines or the wouldn't be recognised. His photographs are shot on a large view camera and on which resulted in sepia image colours. The main focus in his images on what's in front of him the architecture and what's changed around him. I like how his images are framed and how he captures his images. From this research I will be looking at what's changing around me and trying to capture that within my own work and how he also captures the raw essence of photos. Documentary photography has been reinvented since and now artists see the camera as a tool for social change, using it to shed light on injustice, inequality and the side-lined aspects of society. However, social documentary photography is often a subjective art and not all photographers in this category intend their images to aid the bettering of society.

These are some photographs from an exhibition Trees from May- June 2003.