During the Eclipse

Eugène Atget was a French flâneur and a pioneer of documentary photography, determined to document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to modernization. Most of his photographs were first published after his death, and he did not live to see the wide acclaim his work would eventually receive.

Near the end of his life, Eugène Atget, who had spent decades documenting Paris and its inhabitants, came to the attention of the Surrealists through his Montmartre neighbor Man Ray. They were drawn to the evocative strangeness of Atget’s photographs of shop windows, empty streets, city life, and architecture. Several of these images were published in La Révolution surréaliste in 1926, including a striking photograph of a crowd gathered to watch a solar eclipse. Reflecting on Atget’s legacy, the philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote in 1931 that Surrealist photography was “nothing but a literary refinement of motifs that Atget discovered.”

P.S. There's something magical about early photography. Here are 6 pioneers of photography in France!