Cartes postales d'un Paris perdu
Text by Benjamin Weiss
Photographer Eugène Atget is best known as a chronicler of a romantic if disappearing Paris around the turn of the twentieth century. This book presents a series of postcards depicting Paris’s petits métiers, or little trades, exploring another side to Atget’s oeuvre.
More or less Atget’s only published works during his lifetime, the postcards capture the ephemeral nature of life in the city and are part of a long tradition of depicting skilled tradespeople plying their wares. In them, Atget presents the market stands, the odd jobs, the cobbled together shops, and the informal entertainment that gave Paris its piquancy and eternally renewing liveliness.
Benjamin Weiss is Director of Collections and Leonard A. Lauder Curator of Visual Culture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.