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After failed attempts at becoming first an actor, then a painter, Eugène Atget moved into photography, becoming a professional photographer in 1897. Self-taught, he had been producing reference images for artists since 1890 – images of plants, landscapes and various objects. In 1899, he moved happily into the 14th arrondissement area of Montparnasse, at 17b Rue Campagne-Première – not far from the “Cité des Artistes”, which was at no. 9. A veritable village thrived here, at the heart of Rue Campagne-Première, the “Montparnasse of the Montparnos” (the term “Montparnos” referred to the artists associated with this place). 128 workshops were built here using materials recovered from the buildings of the 1889 Universal Exhibition. The Cité des Artistes would host Léonard Foujita, Giorgio de Chirico, Amedeo Modigliani, Vassili Kandinsky, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti, and many more. Atget knew that the painters of this type of neighbourhood would lack photographic and historical documents to feed their inspiration. This was why he photograph Paris and its surroundings tirelessly, over many years. His clients? The biggest names in painting, including Kisling, Foujita, Derain, Vlaminck, Braque, Utrillo, Duchamp and Picasso.

While he was doing this, Atget offered himself increasingly to cultural institutions (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Musée Carnavalet, Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris, Monuments historiques, etc.). These bodies were amassing large numbers of documentary photographs at the time, particularly relating to Parisian monuments. They would go on to buy thousands of Atget’s photographs.

With his 18x24cm box camera, Atget would meticulously photograph every ancient street and picturesque detail of the French capital – the city’s threatened buildings, its dying cottage industries – until he could write “I own the old Paris”. In so doing, he refused to photograph any trace of modernity: the Eiffel Tower and the Metro are absent from his images. Atget’s desire to lay bare the reality of the city makes him the grandfather of modern photography. It’s thanks to Atget, with his insistence on “saving what is disappearing”, that this Paris (mostly destroyed now) can come back to life before our eyes.

By the end of his life, Atget had taken over 8,000 photos and created 17,000 prints. Today, the largest collections of his work are in the Musée Carnavalet in Paris (9,000 prints) and MoMA in New York (5,000 prints). You can also find photos and prints at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (4,000 photos), the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the George Eastman Museum in Rochester (formerly Man Ray’s collection) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.