91
remains, fi fty years after its publication, as a reference
tool. During the same time, Lick created his own Atlas
of the Moon (1903), with a more modest inventory.
The use of photography in the fi eld of Astronomy
became accessible and provided useful information to as-
tronomers regarding the physical nature of space. Drawn
one time by hand, the detailed spectrum of stars was a
work that was long, tiresome, and often required hundreds
of hours of observations. Pioneers of the discipline like
Draper in 1842, and later Secchi, Vogel, and Huggins all
understood that drawings from the photographic plates
would lead to the birth of the discipline “spectrogra-
phy.” From the 1880s on, these scientists created lists
of characteristics of chemicals observed in space that
were isolated and later observed in the laboratory. Those
chemicals provided more information about the spectrum
of the stars. Lists of these chemicals accompanied pho-
tographic atlases such those made by Pickering (1885),
Rowland (1888) or Higgs (1891). Later, with the turn of
the century, came the spectrohéliogrammes of the solar
chromosphere discovered by Deslandres in Meudon
and Hale in Chicago, which appears to have been the
last photographic contribution of the 19th century to the
advent of physical astronomy.
Helene Bocard
Further Readings
Bajac Quentin and Gouvion-Saint-Cyr Agnes (dir.), In the fi eld of
stars, photographers and sky, 1850–2000, cat. exposure, Paris,
museum of Orsay, Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, 2000.
Hoffl eit Dorrit Hoffl eit, Some fi rsts in Astronomical Photography,
Cambridge, Harvard Observatory College, 1950.
Philipps Christopher, “a splendid desolation,” in Cosmos, Of the
Romanticism to the avant-garde, catalogues exposure under the
direction of Jean Clair, Montreal, museum of the Art schools,
Barcelona, Centra of Cultura Contemporania, 1999.
Thomas Ann, “the seizure of the Light” in Photography and sci-
ence, a beauty to be discovered, catalogues exposure, Ottawa,
museum of the art schools, 1997.
ATGET, JEAN-EUGÈNE-AUGUSTE
(1857–1927)
Although two thirds of Eugène Atget’s photographic ca-
reer fell into the twentieth century, more than half of his
life was lived in the nineteenth century and his esthetic
roots were fi rmly grounded in the earlier period.
An orphan by the age of fi ve, Eugène Atget, after
insubstantial schooling in Bordeaux, was briefly a
sailor before moving to Paris in1878 in order to attend
acting school, which he fi tfully did while completing
compulsory military service. Dismissed from the school,
nevertheless he toured the provinces in minor roles until
1887 when he gave up acting in order to take up paint-
ing. This too proved unrewarding and by 1888 he had
established himself as a photographer in Clermont. In
1890 in Paris, to which he had again moved, he hung up
a sign outside his apartment that read, “documents for
artists.” These photographs were at fi rst plant and animal
studies and landscapes, but he soon embarked on what
became an obsessive quest to visually capture the city of
Paris, with particular attention to those aspects of its past
that were vanishing. For this there was clear precedent
in Charles Marville’s work in the 1860s, but Marville
had imperial patronage while Atget operated wholly on
his own with only one important commission.
Gradually he built up a roster of clients, including
public institutions like the Musée Carnavalet (the mu-
seum of the history of Paris), for the inventory of images
he painstakingly assembled of the city’s architecture,
ancient streets, shop signs and storefront displays, street
furniture like lamp posts, itinerant vendors, street fairs,
and public markets. One group of photographs repre-
sents domestic interiors at various economic levels; an-
other records the remnants of the city’s fortifi cations. He
carried out a very extensive series of pictures in public
gardens in the city, like those of the Tuilleries and the
Luxembourg, and in the old royal parks around the city,
like those at Versailles, Fontainebleau, St. Cloud, and
Sceaux. These systematically depict garden sculpture,
fountains, pavilions, parterres, allées of shaped greenery,
and individual venerable trees and only rarely are studies
of the palaces in these parks.
In the notebooks in which he tracked his ever-ex-
panding encyclopedia of the city and its surrounds, he
placed the images in categories of his own invention,
like “The Art of Old Paris” and “Picturesque Paris”
and “The Environs of Paris.” Further, he noted likely
buyers for various subjects and the hours at which his
clients might likely be found at home. He intended the
pictures to serve as references for artisans, illustra-
tors, decorators, publishers, designers for textiles and
the building trades, including workers in boiserie and
wrought iron, and amateur and professional historians
of the city. It is noteworthy that he did not photograph
nineteenth-century constructions like Charles Garnier’s
Opera House or the Eiffel Tower, nor the grand boule-
vards that Haussmann had laid out, nor the elaborate
mansions that had been constructed in the fashionable
neighborhoods near the Arc de Triomphe. Atget’s Paris
is not a tourist’s Paris. He was far more concerned with
the city as experienced in everyday life, from the point
of view of the pedestrian, moving around as he did, on
foot, during countless solitary photographic rounds,
often in less than ideal weather. It is characteristic of
his outlook that when he made photographs of shop
window displays, they were of unpretentious estab-
lishments instead of expensive boutiques. Streetside
displays of vegetable vendors and the racks of second
hand clothing stores were apt to fi gure in his works, with
the occasional inclusion of a dozing shop attendant, an