Something remarkable happened to Eugène Atget whenever he came near to the river Marne: he found himself able to draw an almost baptismal joy from the landscape. This, at least, is what you sense in his photographs. There’s one in particular I’m thinking of. The air in this picture is holy; the water is holy; the lone angler is a veritable saint of “atmosphere.” The myriad reflections of trees and boats stretch away in stillness to a pair of Lombardy poplars mounting sentry against the sky. Everything here is perfect: it’s all so neatly locked together that if you rocked a skiff in the foreground the trees in the distance would shudder. One reach of water imprisons in its burnished pavement the essence of the Île-de-France.

The area around Paris is known for its Gothic towers, but Atget seems never to have climbed to the top of any one of them with his camera. The unfolding green design of the market gardens, the racing cloud shadows, the inevitable approaching rainstorm—these things were not for him. He preferred to head down toward the nearest river, to wander—judging by the angle of his views—along the ancient towing paths, which even in his day were probably overgrown with stinging nettles and St. John’s wort, and already separated by trees from the water. More often—you can see it from the shots—he is tramping along a dirt road. Rainwater gleams in a rut. He spies a thatched cottage with its windows tucked under its