Versailles, vase

Eugène Atget

1901

An albumen silver print by Eugène Atget showing an ornate cast-iron urn planted with flowers at Versailles, made as part of his methodical photographic record of Parisian monuments and garden ornamentation.

You first notice the urn’s monumental weight and ornament—the braided basket rim, winged putti clinging to its sides and a dense mound of blooms—set against a soft, receding garden and still pool that flattens space and makes the object read like a sculpture in the photograph.

This 1901 photograph exemplifies Atget’s project to document the city’s built and decorative culture with lucid, unsentimental images that preserved a vanishing past and helped shape documentary and modernist photography.

Palette

Exhibitions

French Photographs: Daguerre to Atget

1945

Photographs Before Surrealism

1968

The Work of Atget: The Art of Old Paris

1982

The Work of Atget: Old France

1981