Recent Acquisition Gets the Spotlight in New Exhibition

In 2022 the J. Paul Getty Museum acquired the private collection of 209 photographs by Eugène Atget (French, 1857–1927) assembled over the course of 25 years by Southern California collectors Mary and Dan Solomon.

Recognizing the artist’s pivotal role in photographic history, the linking of the technology and traditions of the 19th century with the modernist movements of the 20th century, the Solomons sought to represent all of Atget’s major series and subjects and thereby reflect the full extent of his remarkable achievement in prints of the best possible condition—all with the goal of forming a museum-quality collection.

“We are extremely grateful to Mary and Dan Solomon both for their thoughtfulness in collecting Atget’s work and for their generosity in offering the collection—a portion of which was a donation—to the Getty Museum,” says Timothy Potts, Maria Hummer-Tuttle and Robert Tuttle Director of the Getty Museum. “With this collection, Getty now has one of the finest holdings of works by Eugène Atget in the country, allowing us to showcase his work and its continued influence on photographers today.”

Atget occupies a central position in the history of photography as a strikingly original figure whose career bridged the 19th and 20th centuries and whose influence on the medium continues to this day. Atget made more than 10,000 photographs, all with a boxy wooden camera that held 5 x 7-inch glass negatives. He worked methodically and alone and developed and printed his own negatives. In his obsessive visual documentation of Paris and its environs, he avoided predictable tourist sites and sweeping vistas, instead capturing the soul of the city by focusing on its medieval alleyways, picturesque shop fronts, architectural details, utilitarian vehicles, and parks and trees. Although Atget downplayed his own artistry, his late work moved away from straightforward documentation toward poetic meditations on light and atmosphere.

The exhibition will include selections from Atget’s major series and his varied subjects ranging from street merchants to statuary, window reflections, interiors, and encampments on the city’s outskirts.

“With Atget as our guide,” says Jim Ganz, the Getty Museum’s senior curator of photographs, “the sprawling cacophony of visual noise and activity that characterized the French capital is organized into a series of silent still images. In capturing often-overlooked buildings and monuments, and aspects of the city that might otherwise recede into the background, his photographs convey the essence of what Paris is, or was.”

Eugène Atget: Highlights from the Mary & Dan Solomon Collection will be on view August 1–November 5, 2023, at the Getty Center. It is curated by Jim Ganz, senior curator in the Department of Photographs, with the assistance of Antares Wells, curatorial assistant in the Department of Photographs.