Eugène Atget (1857-1927) took up photography because he felt he had failed as an artist. Beginning in 1898, he made it his mission to record the old streets of Paris.

Atget saw himself as a documentary recorder, and actually described himself as an "author-producer.” The fact that many of his photographs were taken in quiet areas at dawn was not purely an artistic choice but a practical one: Atget's camera and photographic technique were outdated for the time, and required long exposures. As a result he worked when streets were largely empty.

He recorded the shops, streets and architectural details of a Paris that would be swept away by modernization, begun by Georges-Eugène Haussmann on the instructions of Emperor Napoleon III in 1853. The program would not draw to a close until 1927.