Riverwalk

How Eugene Atget changed my life as an artist

Several years ago I attended a conference in San Antonio. I did not go with a group or have a roommate. I was very much on my own spending my scheduled time wandering along the city’s famous Riverwalk.  On an early misty Sunday morning I walked along the pathway. At that time I had just begun taking cellphone pictures with the intention of using them for studio projects.

 The rainy weather at that  early hour left me alone to carefully frame a series of images. Using a new app on my phone, I cropped, adjusted the exposure, color, etc.. on a bench as I took pictures.  I was playing with my camera in the same way I might have a sketchbook out to make visual notes and jot down a simple sketch. I wasn’t thinking, I was just taking in what was around me.

Today I looked at the composition that became “San Antonio '' which hangs in my living room. In my mind I can picture that day. It was a turning point in my process that I can trace back to  graduate school and a little book of photographs of Paris still sitting on the bookshelf in my bedroom. 

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Eugene Atget had a vision of making a living in the theater most of his life. He was orphaned by the time he was 7 and brought up by his grandparents in Bordeaux.  After finishing secondary school he joined the merchant marines for a few years. In his twenties he was determined to realize his dream of  becoming an actor. He left Bordeaux for Paris and applied to drama school.

He had a rough start. His first application was rejected. He applied again only to be expelled  mid-way through his course after being forced into the draft.  Eventually he landed an acting job  with a troop who performed outside of Paris. It was during this period he met his life long partner, an actress named Valentine. She was much older and had a son, but he was devoted to her.

While still traveling with a troop of actors he contracted an infection in his vocal cords and was forced to seek other employment.  His dream had died but life would lead Atget down another creative path; photography. While being a photographer Atget still called himself an actor, giving lectures and readings for many years.

Atget turned to photography to support  himself and his partner.  He eventually became extremely  successful supplying documents for artists, studies for painters, architects, and stage designers. Institutions such as the Musée Carnavalet and the Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris bought his photographs. He was commissioned in 1906 to systematically photograph old buildings in Paris

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Atget stopped photographing during WW1. After the War he sold sets of his negatives for large sums  and became financially independent. In the years before his death he pursued his craft for its own sake, photographing the city, its parks, and a series of photographs of prostitutes. Valentine died in 1926. A heart broken Eugene in 1927. After his death his work increased in value. A large collection of his photographs owned by American photographer Berenice Abbott was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1968.  

Eugene Atget  was known for documenting Paris; creating a portrait of the city. One of his most famous photographs is of the side of Notre Dame framed by a leafless branch. It is an elegant photograph made so by Atget because the viewer can place themselves looking at the cathedral from the bank of the Sien standing under one of the trees that line the path of the waterway. That is his signature for me. When I look at his photographs I am able to place myself, like he did; looking carefully around his environment and documenting the moment. 

https://www.moma.org/artists/229

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Atget was able to become more than his profession. He worked to create images for clients, but in the end he was using his employment to evolve as an artist. His life path inspired me as an older graduate student. He was fifty when he got a big commission to photograph the buildings in Paris. He was 63 when he sold his negatives and was able to work as an independent artist. The last third of his life was his most creative.

His story helped me to reframe my idea of missing a “window of opportunity”. Although I have wanted to be an artist since my earliest memories, I decided in my 20’s that being a painter was an unrealistic goal. I worked for a time in business and did very well. When I had my daughter, it was clear to me that working in a corporate structure would be impossible to coalesce with my goals for motherhood. 

When I changed careers, teaching seemed to fit well with family life. I added a teaching degree in art and was fully prepared to take additional classes to become an elementary instructor if an art job did not appear. Luckily a job did come up and I was able to return to working in a field I have always loved. I saw this as a reasonable compromise between my early dreams and my current reality.  

After writing a short paper about Atget in graduate school, I replaced the idea of a compromise with using my work life as a period of artistic growth. I would be honing my skills as an artist during summers and when I retired I would have the financial independence to work everyday in the studio.  I began my journey from a painter to a mixed media artist, and eventually to working with vintage photographic images, digital platforms, paint, print, and stitching. 

Atget’s life path turned the notion of being a young struggling painter in a community of other struggling artists in order to become a real painter on its head for me. I looked beyond painting. I stopped thinking about age as a cage and focused on growing my creative practice over time. After being retired for almost ten years, I am doing my best work.

Until Next time….