Au bon puits, rue Michel Le Conte, 36 (IIIe)

Eugène Atget photographed this shop front primarily in order to record the seventeenth-century wrought iron sign depicting a pulley, shallow bucket, and rope. The liquid to be drawn up "At the Good Well" (Au Bon Puits) was not water but wine. The establishment was for a long time a famous cabaret, which closed in 1906, five years after Atget made this view. Its marker, however, was salvaged and is now part of a collection in the Musée Carnavalet of shop signs that used visual symbols rather than words to announce wares to members of the public, only some of whom were literate in the 1600s. Atget made a series of photographs of these signs, which he recognized were in the process of disappearing (see also 90.XM.124.13).

It seems likely that the silhouette seen in the windowpane just to the right of the door handle is the reflection of the photographer in the street standing sideways to his camera and tripod, which can indistinctly be seen in the center panel (zoom in on image above). Judging by the height of the handle, the figure is some distance away from the door, far enough so that if he were inside the shop he would be lost in shadow. This makes the picture a discreet but not unintentional self-portrait. Given the large number of photographs that he made of storefronts, it is not surprising that fragmented reflections of Atget or his camera occasionally occur, but these other glimpses seem incidental, not purposeful.

Adapted from Eugène Atget, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Gordon Baldwin (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), 20. ©2000, J. Paul Getty Trust.