Eugène Atget

Born in Libourne in 1857, Jean-Eugène-Auguste Atget was orphaned at a young age and raised by his maternal grandparents. After a stint in the merchant navy, he moved to Paris in 1878 with aspirations of becoming an actor. Though he found some success performing with a traveling group, an infection of his vocal cords led him to give up acting in 1887. He briefly tried painting before discovering photography around 1888, taking his first known photographs in Amiens and Beauvai…