Spiritual Enlightment_Photography Masters: Eugene Atget

This is the first of a series...In the first three decades of the twentieth century, Eugène Atget (1857-1927) tirelessly and sensitively photographed the city of Paris and its environs. Though Atget considered himself a photographic illustrator of Paris and not an artist, and refused to allow himself to be judged by fashionable contemporary artistic mores or use his socially accepted status as "artisan," he inadvertently established himself as one of the 20th century's greatest photographers. It is the intuitive visual quality of his work that has continued to attract the attention and admiration of later photographers who?as the exhibition demonstrates?have shared ideas of the "ready-made," common aesthetic approaches, related subject matter, and the use of serial photography