Rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville

Eugène Atget's penchant for photographing in the early morning accounts for the street's empty stillness. A sole inhabitant peers out from the hotel doorway, so unobtrusive he becomes a part of the architecture as he quietly watches the photographer work.

Atget's decision to photograph when the city was deserted heightens the sense of desolate abandonment in the city's older sections, soon to be demolished to make way for grand, broad, new boulevards. The two dark, solemn buildings in the foreground thus frame the old, narrow lane with the solid weight of history. An hourglass-shaped shaft of bright daylight cuts through the frame, dividing the street into shadow and illumination.