Versailles, Le Parc 1906

This photograph, Versailles, Le Parc, was captured by Eugène Atget at the turn of the 20th century. It’s a view of a sculpture in a park. The cherubic satyrs hoist a heavy bowl. But what kind of park is this? The light is murky, not bright and cheerful. The sculpture is dark and weathered with age, and the cherubs seem weighed down by the burden they carry. I can see a lot of Atget’s other works in this image, and perhaps he was thinking about their lives, too. Atget took so many photographs of Paris, mostly empty of people, and you wonder, why the parks, the buildings, the streets, the statues? Was he lonely? The image is heavy with a sense of the past, but it also feels like a dream – a place half-forgotten and just on the edge of disappearing. It's a feeling a lot of artists have, that you're in a dialogue with those who came before.