Eugene Atget was a French Photographer. He was born is 1856/7 but didn't try his hand at photography until his later years and stuck at it for 30 years, until the day he died. After his death he left over 2000 8x10 glass plate negatives of photographs of the city of Paris.
Atget photographed Paris like no other artist. He was dedicated and persistent in his documentation of the city even when there was little to no interest or recognition from the public in his work.
Atget lugged an 8x10 view camera around Paris, along with his glass plates ready to be exposed. He worked mainly early in the morning to be able to get maximum light on the clean empty streets of Paris, as his exposures where quite long.
From the age of 50 Atget lived off nothing more than bread, milk and sugar as he was not making enough money from his photographs.
Eugene Atget's work is technically beautiful, as well as being visual beautiful. His images are not just snaps of a street that he happened to walk past one day, but seem to be well planned and thought out pieces of art. I like to think that Atget might have spend his afternoons walking around, searching for places that caught his eye and then he would go back and photograph them the following morning. But that's just my take on it.
What's inspiring about this man is the fact that when he was getting barely any recognition and could hardly afford to feed himself Atget continued to get up early every morning and walk the streets of Paris taking his photographs. And it wasn't until just after his death did people find and acknowledge his work. Now there is a lesson to be learned by all-persist persist persist and believe in the work that you are doing to continue with this persistence.
I just really enjoy looking at Eugene Atget's photographs as i get a lovely feeling from them. The same feeling as what i would like my photographs to have-now to pin point this and execute it in my work..
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