Eugène Atget and Documentary Photography of the City. (May 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rizov, Vladimir
• Is Part Of: Theory, culture & society. Volume 38:Number 3(2021)
• Page Start: 141
• Page End: 163
• Publication Date: 2021-05
• Subjects: Eugène Atget -- Charles Baudelaire -- documentary photography -- Jacques Rancière -- social theory -- urban space; Social sciences -- Periodicals; 301.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0263276420942804
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0263-2764

Abstract

This paper focuses on the documentary photography of Eugène Atget in late 19th and early 20th-century Paris. I will begin by exploring Atget's position as a pioneering documentary photographer in the field, followed by an engagement with the urban environment of Paris, in which Atget worked almost exclusively. Finally, I will analyse a single photograph in depth while discussing it in relation to the work of Charles Baudelaire and Jacques Rancière. This text is a contribution to a literature of critical engagement with documentary photography, urban history and the politics of class visibility. I will do so by arguing for the political significance of reading Atget's images in a critical, political manner that engages with Rancière's concept of the 'anonymous multiple'. Atget is considered a key documentary photographer, and, as such, he is exemplary of the history of documentary photography and its treatment of its subjects.