Eugène Atget was a French flâneur and a pioneer of documentary photography, noted for his determination to document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to modernization. Most of his photographs were first published by Berenice Abbott after his death. Though he sold his work to artists and craftspeople, and became an inspiration for the surrealists, he did not live to see the wide acclaim his work would eventually receive.
Atget, c. 1890
Organ Grinder (1898)
Atget's birthplace in Libourne
Avenue des Gobelins (1927)
Berenice Alice Abbott was an American photographer best known for her portraits of cultural figures of the interwar period, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and science interpretation of the 1940s to the 1960s.
Berenice Abbott (1930s)
Photograph by Abbott of her friend Margarett Sargent taken in Paris in 1928
Abbott's photograph of Janet Flanner in 1925
Bowery restaurant photograph for Changing New York, 1935.