Rue de la Corderie

Eugène Atget's interest in depicting how merchandise was presented extended to this extremely modest commercial enterprise, a costume shop, which is apparently tucked into the ground floor of a residential structure. Its means of display are of the greatest simplicity. At the left end of a rod that runs over the shop window and door dangles a clown costume, followed by others for roles that cannot be discerned. A child's Zouave jacket hangs from a little bracket next to the door; other vestments are suspended from the awning and its supports. More merchandise is simply piled or boxed on the two chairs on the sidewalk, under one of which sits a striped cat (zoom in on the chair in the lower left of the image above to see the cat). The shelves of the shallow store window are stacked with masks, crowns, a helmet, Turkish slippers, and other theatrical items. A stained table in the foreground seemingly awaits additional goods to be displayed. Whatever its one-time commercial viability, the costume shop and the house above it are now gone, replaced by a brutally unattractive apartment block.

As is often the case, Atget's activities are observed by the neighbors. Across the side street beyond two pushcarts a man in a white duster, apparently the proprietor of a secondhand clothing store, looks toward the camera (zoom in just above the cart in the street). A jumble of used garments is piled beside him and suspended overhead. Beneath the barrows a blur marks the ghostly image of a child seated on the curb, elbows akimbo, who moved during the course of Atget's exposure. In the left-hand window on the fourth floor of the white building a woman peers down into the street. The inclusion of these people is incidental to Atget's purpose, but they animate the scene and give a sense of local life in fair weather.

Originally published in Eugène Atget, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Gordon Baldwin (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), 54. ©2000, J. Paul Getty Trust.