Rue du Jour

Eugène Atget, 1925

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Artist: Eugène Atget (French, 1857–1927)
Medium: Gelatin silver chloride printing-out paper print
Size: Image: 22.5 × 17.9 cm (8 7/8 × 7 1/16 in.)
Culture: French
Museum: J. Paul Getty Museum
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

The Paris dwellings of the rich were traditionally shaped around a forecourt, with the principal rooms located in the block farthest from the street. Such was the case with the building in the foreground of this photograph, the Hôtel de Royaumont, which was constructed in 1612 for a high-ranking French churchman. It stood immediately next to and in the shadow of the large and important church of Saint-Eustache, which was still under construction when the house was built.

Rented for years to secular tenants, the mansion was confiscated by the state after the French Revolution. By 1860 it was occupied by a crockery and porcelain merchant, whose wares were advertised by signs painted on the exterior walls. The arch of the entrance gateway was covered by more signage, and the noble edifice was in decrepit condition. The building now on this site has the same volumes as the ancient residence and similar details but was constructed in 1950; hence its present appearance is pristine by comparison with the structure in 1925.

Eugène Atget rarely made a grittier photograph than this, which is highly expressive of urban density and decay. The short focal length of his lens produced a compression of the architecture of the manse and church, so it is difficult to separate the uniformly grime-coated elements of each building. The shadowy little girl in the doorway, who moved away in the course of the exposure, seems nearly as dirty as the stone. One wonders if her life was as deprived as the setting would suggest. The tilted barrow and the litter in the street add further forlorn notes to a depressing scene of squalor, in which even the letters of the truncated sign at left, although the brightest tones in the photograph, become ominous.

Text: J. Paul Getty Trust, CC BY 4.0.