[Staircase, Montmartre]

From the Getty Museum record

> This tautly composed image of a precipitously raked staircase descending the hill of Montmartre is another example of the kind of personal photographs that Eugène Atget created in the 1920s. He placed his camera at the top of the stairs, which are flanked by a ramp too steep for vehicular traffic. The staircase and ramp are jointly named the rue du Calvaire, not because they are a penance to climb, but because this area is associated with events connected to the martyrdom nearby in Roman times of Saint Denis, patron saint of France and alleged first bishop of Paris. As the stairway was not constructed until 1844, Atget's interest in the site was probably motivated less by its historical associations and more for its picturesque qualities, emblematic of the kind of spaces that increased urbanization was obliterating. > > The photograph is a study in the contrasting textures of decaying plaster, corroded metal, and battered stone. The leafless tree, which perfectly fills its square of sky, is an emphatic vertical, steadying the downward rush of stairs. Perhaps even older than the tree, and next to it in the patch of hillside garden squeezed among the houses just to the right of the tree trunk, is a classical herm, a domestic sculpture that ameliorates its surrounding banality. Chimney pots and stacks create a staccato fringe along the rooftops in this densely packed and melancholy composition. > > Adapted from *Eugène Atget*, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum by Gordon Baldwin (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2000), 72. ©2000, J. Paul Getty Trust.