Maybe they're erotic books? Or something for the prostitutes to read while waiting for clients?So maybe he wasn't just photographing the outsides of those businesses with big numbers on the buildings? Or given the evident little library in the room, it could have been his own home studio. I doubt people visited brothels to read books.
A few rich guys were probably paying him to make pictures of their mistresses, like King Henry II commissioned.
I haven't been able to find anywhere a discussion of the economics of Atget's endeavours. He bought 180×240mm Bande Bleue plates, rather than coating his own, and it is said that the total oeuvres amounts to 10,000 plates, which were then contact printed for sale. That's a huge outlay if it was to be recouped piecemeal from artists seeking copy. Even though he ultimately sold large chunks of his collection for what are said to be sizeable amounts of dosh, he must surely have been seriously out of pocket during the process of accumulating them?
I thought the Wikipedia article was nice and straightforward. Acknowledges the questions that Atget's work throws up, but doesn't indulge in interpretative woffle.Although I don’t necessarily take Wikipedia as an ultimate authority, it is usually a good jumping off point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugène_Atget
But advance commissions? - by whom and why? Unless we know that, we really don't know anything. ... just more speculation.
Aaah...French postcards!France did have a long commercial history of female nude and pornographic photography, so no surprise there.
As noted, he was a flaneur, which would fit in the artist scene. In the US he might have been seen either as a "gentleman of means" or someone "with no visible means of support". Today he would be considered in the gig economy--still a fringe position for some.
Comments on getting up early to avoid the crowds...I don't think so! Then, now, except during plagues and invasions I doubt there have been empty streets in Paris, since there have been streets in Paris.
View attachment 382770
This and others show the ghost images you would expect, glass plates and slow lens in a dusky street view... and if you look at this gallery most (or so) show people, in anything that shows more than a half-block of a street.
A lovely slice of Paris in time and space...I need days to look through these for familiar places! My memory of Paris in the '70s is closer to some of these than to 2024--that's a scary thought!
Keep looking.
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