Marchand de Paniers de Fil de Fer, Eugène Atget; Joel Snyder

Exhibition Label: "Art for Kansas: Building the Collection, 1988-1998 (Recent Acquisitions)," Nov-1998, John Pultz and Susan Earle Atget's photographs are picturesque views of Paris at the turn of the century that document aspects of the city that modernity threatened to destroy. Atget was not recognized as an artist in his own time. He never displayed his photographs as art; rather he sold them to artists to use as moders for THEIR work. Berenice Abbott, a young U.S. art dealer, purchased Atget's negatives after his death to save his magnificent body of work from destruction and oblivion. Over the years, Abbott tried printing Atget's negatives, using gelatin-silver paper, but achieved poor results. The Museum of Modern Art in New York eventually purchased the negatives and commissioned the Chicago Albumen Works to print some of them, reviving the albumen-silver technology Atget used. (The Marchand de Paniers de Fil de Fer is one of these prints.) Although this method of printing on paper coated with albumen, a protein found in egg whites, was popular during the late 19th century, few contemporary photographers use this delicate procedure.