The Atget Rephotographic
Project
The photographs displayed here are the
result of an ongoing project begun by students in the first Paris
program group in 1987, the rephotography of sites photographed by the
French photographer Eugene Atget who, between 1900 and 1926, made
approximate 6,000 photographs of Paris. Using reproductions of
Atget’s photographs, students attempted to locate his “tripod holes”
and to replicate the exact view and framing of his original scene.
The result is a comparison which affords us an experience not unlike
that of the time traveler in H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine” for whom
a fixed point in space becomes the focus of one’s historical
imagination.
Of course, what was not possible to reproduce was the extraordinary
atmosphere of Atget’s Paris, the sense of abandonment, and his
sensitivity to those aspects of the city which, even as he
photographed them, belonged more to the 19th century than to ours.
The process of rephotographing Atget allows us to see not only how he
chose to photograph a location but also what he chose to exclude and
thereby heightens our awareness of the particularity of his vision.
Click here or on the top left image
above to begin...