atget

I stumbled upon a book discussing Eugene Atget and his photographs, at the library. The Miami Beach regional branch of the library is very nice. Many of the books on the shelf are still new.

Atget’s photographs of Parisian street scenes are very intriguing. Apparently, they are his most ‘famous’ images. Atget seem to have capture the city’s stillness and poise; the moment before the city is fully awake and engaged. I can image his routine which would lead him and his camera on a sineous path throughout Paris; chasing the light, attuned to the moment and poise to capture the next shot.

Here are two images, probably shot the same day( at least the same year, 1924). The websites that I snatched these images from are calling the building in the background “the parthenon.”

Correction: I misidentified the building in the imgaes as the ‘parthenon,’ it’s clearly identified as the ‘pantheon’. My architectural education didn’t thoroughly cover France of the 18th century; though, it did introduced me the works of Boullee, Ledoux and Lequec. Pantheon to me refers to a Roman temple, but it makes total sense that in the Neoclassical period that a building partly modelled on the Roman Pantheon would be designed and build in Paris. It pretty much functionned as a temple of great men of France–serving as a burial place to Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, Dumas and the Curies(Marie being the first woman buried there).