La Rochelle, Hôtel de Ville

Eugène Atget

1899 or before

A sepia-toned albumen silver photograph by Eugène Atget that calmly records the vaulted arcade of La Rochelle’s Hôtel de Ville, aiming to document the building’s architectural character and atmosphere for posterity.

Your eye is led along a rhythmic row of grooved columns and repeating barrel vaults toward a distant dark doorway, while the decorated ceiling panels and soft, even light give the empty passage an almost theatrical, quietly monumental quality.

Part of Atget’s systematic survey of French streets and monuments, this picture helped establish photography as a means of architectural documentation and shaped modern documentary and modernist approaches to everyday urban space.

Palette

Exhibitions

French Photographs: Daguerre to Atget

1945

The Work of Atget: Old France

1981

Photographs Before Surrealism

1968

The Work of Atget: The Art of Old Paris

1982