**The artist: Eugène Atget**

In spite of his fame, we don’t know much about Atget’s life. He began photography in 1888 and, about 1890, began to make self - taught photographic documents for artists. At first, he photographed landscapes and vegetation. Then about 1897 - 1898, at the period when the Commission of Old Paris was created, he took it upon himself to systematically photograph the old areas of Paris earmarked for disappearance, as well as the small trades, condemned by the advent of the big stores. At the end of his life, he took photographs of parks and shop windows with reflections which made him famous with the surrealist artists. Berenice Abbott, ManRay’s assistant wrote about Atget: « He will be remembered as a historian of urbanism, a true romantic, a lover of Paris, a Balzac of the camera, who permits us to weave together a picture of French civilization.