Eclipse
Eugène Atget; Berenice Abbott
Description
Subject Matter:
One of Atget's most iconic images, thanks to fellow photographer Man Ray who put it on the cover of "La Revolution Surrealiste," this scene depicts a crowd of Parisians at the Place de la Bastille watching a solar eclipse through pinhole viewers. Man Ray was likely attracted to the ambiguities of the scene: a crowd of pedestrians witnessing an event the viewer cannot see, using a device that, counterintuitively, seems to block their vision. Like many of Atget's photographs of Paris, this subject hovers between the documentary and the interpretive, with a disquieting twist that appealed to the Surrealists and to fellow photographer Berenice Abbott, who chose this print as one of twenty images for a portfolio that she believed best encapsulated Atget's oeuvre.
Physical Description:
Crowd of people on a city street looking up at the sky.
Usage Rights:
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