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As with Proust’s novel, the object of the project that defines the career and legacy of Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget is the remembrance of things past. Armed with a cumbersome glass plate camera that was already old-fashioned in his time, Atget set out to systematically photograph the Vieux Paris ('old Paris') he perceived to be rapidly disappearing in the face of the drastic socio-economic and architectural transformations that accompanied the city’s modernization. 69 Quai de la Tournelle epitomizes the sense of nostalgia that pervades Atget’s photographic oeuvre. With its theatrical arrangement of outworn furniture, outmoded decorative objects, and obsolete household implements rendered ornamental curiosities, there could hardly be a more fitting symbol of the antiquarian impulse than the antique shop. |
Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget (French, 1857-1927)
69 Quai de la Tournelle, 1912 Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Purchase through the generosity of Jesse Lie Farber, Saundra B. Lane, Barnabas McHenry, Richard and Ronay Menschel and Melvin R. Seiden, P2003.2 |
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