Untitled
Eugène Atget
French, 1857–1927
1899-1900
This albumen silver print by Eugène Atget records a horse-drawn street boiler and a laborer in Paris around 1900, part of his deliberate effort to document the city's everyday trades and disappearing urban details.
You are immediately struck by the squat, riveted metal cylinder and chimney, the worker bent to his task beside the large wooden wheel, and the patient horse standing against a softly blurred urban façade, giving the scene a quiet, unvarnished intimacy.
As part of Atget’s vast visual inventory, the photograph helped establish documentary photography as a means to preserve the textures of urban life and the relationship between human labor and early industrial machinery at the turn of the century.
Medium
Albumen silver print
Dimensions
Approx. 6 1/2 × 8 1/2" (16.5 × 21.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Abbott-Levy Collection. Acquired through the generosity of Shirley C. Burden, and Family of Man Fund
Accession
1.1969.4169
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
