Eugène Atget, Paris, 1927

While Abbott is best known for her images of New York City in the 1930s, she is also largely responsible for Eugène Atget’s worldwide acclaim as a photographer. Abbott moved to Europe in the early 1920s to study sculpture and was hired as Man Ray’s darkroom assistant, and was introduced to Atget a few years later. Abbott admired Atget’s methodical approach to his photographs of Paris and its surroundings, which later influenced her own photographs of New York’s rapidly changing city streets. She photographed the old photographer two years later, shortly before his death in 1927. Although she was unable to show Atget his portrait before he died, Abbot purchased most of Atget’s negatives and prints after his death and published them in a book of his work, Atget, Photographe de Paris. This image was used as the frontispiece to the book, which helped to establish Atget’s international reputation.