Cour de Rouen 1922

This photograph, Cour de Rouen, was made by Eugène Atget, we're not sure exactly when. Atget’s photographs are so atmospheric, like paintings made with light. The way he coaxes tone and texture out of the mundane is, well, it’s remarkable. Look at the peeling plaster on that building. It almost looks like impasto. A heavy paint, worked and reworked. But, of course, it’s light that’s created that illusion. Atget was interested in surface, in the nitty-gritty materiality of the everyday world. It's almost like he was trying to capture the weight of history, the way time and weather accumulate on things. You can see that patina and the shadows create this really tangible sense of depth, like you could reach out and touch it. Atget’s work reminds me a bit of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographs of industrial structures, but with a melancholic, romantic twist. Both artists looked at the world with curiosity, finding beauty in unexpected places.