St. Cloud (cascade). Albumen print, the image measuring 219.1x181 mm; 8 5/8x7 1/8 inches, with Atget's title and inventory number, in pencil, on verso. 1923.
Atget's fin de siècle photography was exhibited alongside Berenice Abbott's New York imagery at the newly-opened Galerie Zabriskie, Paris as early as 1977, representing, extraordinarily, the first commercial exhibition for the French photographer. Abbot and Atget are inextricably linked, Abbott first encountering the elderly French photographer's work in 1925 at the Man Ray Studio. After Atget's death, in 1927, she collaborated with Julien Levy, of New York's Julien Levy Gallery, to buy most of Atget's negatives and prints, bringing them back to New York in 1929. Abbott's initiative preserved Atget's archive, which, given its influence on the avant-garde, has become an important chapter of Abbott's legacy.
