Eugène Atget: the Making of a Reputation

International Center of Photography, Jan 29 - May 4, 2026

Eugène Atget: The Making of a Reputation, examines how Eugène Atget (1857–1927) came to be regarded as one of the forefathers of modern photography through the timely and tireless advocacy of Berenice Abbott. Featuring historic prints from ICP’s collection alongside landmark publications and other printed ephemera, the exhibition reconsiders the role that Abbott played in establishing Atget’s now-canonical status, sometimes to the detriment of her own remarkable career as a photographer. Though Atget didn’t live to see it, Abbott became the ideal steward, proving that every photographer needs a champion.

Over the last three decades of his life, Atget undertook an intensive documentation of Paris and its surrounding districts, assembling a vast archive of a time and place under acute pressure from the forces of 20th century modernization. Major monuments and humble buildings; storefronts, staircases, ironwork and street traders; parks, trees and the undefined edges of the city—all were among the litany of subjects he photographed, both preserving and transfiguring their inherent formal and historical qualities.

In 1923, Bernice Abbott, then a young sculptor, was introduced to the artist Man Ray and became his studio assistant. She soon took to photography and met Atget—whose studio was on the same street as Man Ray’s—in 1926. The following year, she made three portraits of Atget, but he died shortly before she could show them to him. Though a portion of Atget’s prints were sold to the city archives of Paris, Abbott managed to acquire what remained and then, with little prospect of financial gain, immediately began promoting his work, convinced it was a major artistic achievement. Decades later, in 1968, her role as Atget’s champion would come to its natural close, as the 1,415 glass negatives and around 8,000 vintage prints in her collection were acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which took up the task of advocating for Atget and his work.

Curated by David Campany, Creative Director at ICP, Eugène Atget: The Making of a Reputation focuses on the years between the publication of Atget’s images (uncredited) in the journal La Révolution Surréaliste in 1926 and the appearance four years later of ATGET: Photographe de Paris, the first book of his work, overseen by Abbott. It presents three related expressions of Atget’s work: the magazines that published it, the prints (drawn primarily from ICP’s collection) and the images chosen for the book. Each provides distinct insights into how the meaning and significance of his photographs was formed, claimed and positioned.

“Every photographer needs a champion,” said Campany. “Eugène Atget had Berenice Abbott and without her, his work would have been all but lost.”