Brothel, Versailles, 1921
Gelatin silverchloride
printingout paper print
21.7 x 16.4 cm (8-9/16 x 6-1/2in.)
85.XM.350

Before his death in 1927, Atget was practically unknown outside of Paris, even to professionals in the field of photography. His genius was first recognized about 1924 by two young Americans living and working in Paris-Berenice Abbott and Man Ray (related to-->> 172,175). They both appreciated the ele- ments of contradiction, ambivalence, and ambiguity that made him seem to them more an artist than a journeyman practitioner. Atget had visited Versailles many times to photograph the royal chateau and its gardens. On one visit to the nearby city, he recorded a woman standing in the sidewalk doorway wearing a fur stole draped over her shoulders, high-topped lace boots, and a dress with the hemline well above her knees, which in 1921 was the uniform of a woman who earned her living from the streets. Her face has the beginnings of a smile, and she looks directly at the photographer with an expression of trusting familiarity. The photograph's message is ambiguous and equivocal, because Atget gives equal compositional weight to the architecture and the figure; in so doing, he skillfully reconciles competing visual elements.
(EUGENE ATGET related to-->> 185, Japanese)

related: web site -->>
• The Atget Rephotographic Project
• Masters of Photography