Butte🃏rfield & Butterfield, San Francisco, 17 November 1999, Lot 404💞8

Bernice Abbot, The World of Atget (New York, 1964), pl. 135

Molly Nebit, Atget’s Seven Albums (New Haven: Yale University, 1992), pl. 12

Atget’s Paris (Paris, 1992), p. 776

John Szarkowski et al., Atget (New York, 2000), p. 76

In Focus: Eugène Atget (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), p. 58

'His gaze was dirꦑect and frank, but he, more than any of his contemporaries, was able to make the imaginary co-exist with the real. And thus 💞he invented modern photography'.

Laure Beamount-Maillet, In Focus: Eugène Atget (Los Ange🌄les: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), p. 25.

Eugène Atget’s images often depict a version of Paris that is foreign to the contemporary viewer, a Paris mostly devoid of vehicles and pedestrians, and 'Porte de Montreuil' (Villa d'un chiffonier) (or Ragpicker's House) is no exception. Here, Atget gives us a glimpse into the life of those who lived on the very outskirts of the city without actually showing us its inhabitants. Ragpickers, who combed through and resold the discarded belongings of others, were some of Paris' most poverty-stricken residents. Comprising about five thousand of the city's population, many of them lived in shed-like, temporary houses. The house pictured here is decorated with stuffed animals, dolls and leaves. It was ‘remarkable that Atget was allowed to so closely infringe on a stranger’s dwelling’ (In Focus, p. 57).

Other prints of this image are in the following collections: the Jꦚ. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (94.𝕴XM.108.6); and The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1.1969.991).