Photography at the Turn of the Century: from Pictorialism to Eugène Atget

This presentation features works by pictorialists and by Eugène Atget, a singular artist contemporary of this artistic movement. Appearing at the end of the 19th century, this international movement aimed at restoring a truly artistic dimension to the photographic medium which in their eyes had taken a purely commercial orientation. Initiated in Britain by such artists and theoreticians as P.-H. Emerson, continued by Frederick Evans, it soon spread to the United States where amongst others Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen launched the group "Photo-Secession", giving pictorialism its most beautiful means of expression, pursued in the work of Clarence White, George Seeley, Paul Haviland and the Viennese artist Heinrich Kühn. Pictorialism was criticised as too exclusive or superficial, but it opened the way for a genuine recognition of photography as pertaining to artistic creation in the 20th century. At the same time, skilled but isolated photographers strove to record reality and give an account of the world. Eugène Atget, who worked in this field from 1898 to 1928, was undisputedly the greatest of these artists.