2004-341: Mannequin, Avenue des Gobelins

Place made: New York, New York, United States

Mannequin, Avenue des Gobelins, 1927, printed 1930s

Gelatin silver print
23.1 x 17 cm. (9 1/8 x 6 11/16 in.)
mount: 36.4 x 28.6 cm. (14 5/16 x 11 1/4 in.)
Museum purchase, Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund
2004-341
In just over three decades, the French photographer Eugène Atget made ten thousand photographic negatives that documented the cultural legacy of France and its rapidly changing capital, Paris. The often-surreal nature of his images, such as this headless mannequin, appealed to the Surrealists, who saw in his photographs an urban iconography of a haunted modernity. He did not receive widespread recognition until the 1920s, when the American photographer Berenice Abbott published many of his images and championed his work.