Eugène Atget

For about 30 years Atget hauled a heavy wooden view camera round Paris at dawn, photographing shopfronts, courtyards, staircases, park statues and street trades before the city of old was demolished. The early light, empty streets and reflections in shop windows give his thousands of plates a quiet, haunted look. He called them documents for artists and sold them to painters, set designers and archives. Berenice Abbott, who met him shortly before his death in 1927, bought and printed his archive and brought it to the world.