Eugène Atget - Das alte Paris (1. Version)

Napoléon III's prefect and urban planner, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, gave Paris a new cityscape as we know it today. However, the conversions were not completed until 1927. Its architectural style was characterized by classicism, where the buildings were often provided with a balcony running all around.
Eugène Atget had to give up his career as an actor after 15 years due to a vocal cord infection and came to Paris in 1890. He began photographing old Paris with a large format 18 x 24 camera and sold the images to artists such as Georges Braque, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Maurice Utrillo and Maurice de Vlaminck. He usually went in search of motifs early in the morning when the light was favorable and he was not disturbed by passers-by. Atget loved old shops, beautiful portals, small cafes and bars like you guys. The Surrealists were enthusiastic about his photographs.
The Hôtel Matignon was the seat of the Austrian Embassy from 1888 to 1933 and is now the official residence of the French Prime Minister.
On the outskirts of Paris lived the poor whom Atget took in their dwellings between 1913 and 1915. In 1898 the Musée Carnavalet began purchasing photographs by Atget, which the Bibliothèque historique de la villle de Paris soon joined and commissioned the photographer to produce more photographs of old Paris. Atget has photographed the magnificent parks of Versailles, St. Cloud and Sceaux for decades and "portrayed" the trees up close.
In 1898 Atget was able to move to a more comfortable apartment at rue 17 (and 19) Campagne-Première in the 14th arrondissement. Man Ray, Léonard Fujita, Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, Erik Satie and Vladimir Majakowsky lived on the same street, as many did other artists, like Arthur Rimbaud, Amedo Modigliani, Jean Villard, Rainer Maria Rilke and later on Yves Klein. Jean-Luc Godard showed the street in his film "A bout de Suffle" (1960). - It is little known that Atget was a lecturer at the Ècole des Hautes Ètude Sociales and had taught French literature at many universities in Paris.
The American photographer Berencie Abbott came to Paris in 1921, worked in Man Ray's laboratory and founded her own Paris Photo Studio in 1926, financially supported by Peggy Guggenheim, where she photographed many writers and artists, e.g.: Janet Flanner, James Joyce, George Antheil, Djuna Barnes, Jean Cocteau and Léonard Fujita.
At the invitation of Marcel Duchamp, Julien Levy came to Paris from New York in 1927 and stayed there until 1930. He was the son of a successful real estate dealer, studied at the Harvard University, but gave up his studies and became one of the most successful American art dealers of the 20th century. When Eugène Atget died on August 4, 1927, Berenice Abbott sent a telegram to Julien Levy asking for $ 1.000 to save Atget's collection. Whereupon Levy immediately sent the money.
Berenice Abbott returned to New York in 1929 and introduced Atget's work to the United States. A contract between Berenice Abbott and Julien Levy states that Levy will remain in the background as a silent partner. Levy also returned and opened the "Julien Levy Gallery" in Manhattan in 1931, where he mainly exhibited the Surrealists but also pictures by Alfred Stieglitz, who became an important mentor to him on art issues.
In 1949, Levy closed his gallery and retired to a farm in Connecticut - not far from Roxbury, where Inge Morath and Arthur Miller had lived. In March
1977, Julien Levy presented his memoirs with French charm (the author was present) in a bookshop in Connecticut.
In France, Eugène Atget's oeuvre remained unexplored for private collectors for al long time, with the exception of Andrè Jammes, the translator of Beaumont Newhall's "History of Photography", who collected Atget's pictures from an early age. The now 96-year-old lives a secluded life in Paris, while his renowned antiquarian bookshop is still open to an interested clientele.
On May 25, 1976, the concept of the Fotografis Laenderbank Collection (today Bank Austria) was presented to the Viennese press. On the day, Jean-Claude-Lemagny, curator of contemporary photography at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, came to Vienna to speak about the collection at the BnF. The cornerstone of the Fotografis collection was laid in 1975 with the purchase of the photo album "Eugène Atget" published by Berenice Abbott in 1956 in an edition of 100 copies. The collection owns the album No 89/100. In 1981 the album was exhibited for the first time by the Fotografis Collection during the Vienna Festival.

[@Tucholsky59]

Eine wirklich interessante Reise in die Vergangenheit von Paris. Danke 🙂

[@annaauer8944]

Danke, liebe Tochter

[@PeterB9]

Die Produktionsqualität ist merklich gestiegen. 👍

[@annaauer8944]

Danke für das Lob! Versuche meine Werkstätte etwas professioneller zu handhaben.