[jnanian]

i enjoy atget's work a lot. both because of the technical mastery he must have had to deal with his materials
( ortho-type emulsions are not the easiest to deal with ... ) and i really enjoy looking at what places used to be like.
atget was commissioned by the archives to record the city, its monuments, street vendors &c so when the city was "urban renewal'ized"
there would be some sort of visual record of what was there. he was using photography for its best use... to document.
i am a little bias, seeing i have a background in the built environment and portrait making and often get commissioned to do exactly what he did.
i think it was great that bernice abbott helped him as she did. he started off poor, barely eeked out a living and before she found all his glass plates in a dumpster
he would have ended up as a complete unknown ( except in archive's circles ) ... and now we know of him ...