Atget’s photographs were, at their deepest level, a response to the modern condition of impermanence. Why else spend so much time compiling a visual record of all those timeworn things that would soon disappear - signs of intimate life whose import wouldn't be deciphered until it was too late? I thought of those little Parisian vistas that didn't open up into any sort of grandeur; of the chipped and faded paint on the wooden facade of a tavern - a row of wine bottles in the window above three small curtains; the tilting city shacks with cracked masonry; the patchwork skylines of unremarkable neighborhoods; wooden wagons parked at the end of cobblestone alleys, hand-crafted stair railings. Atget must have known that if he didn't hurry, if he didn't hit the streets before dawn, Old Paris and its ancient neighborhood intimacies would be gone, along with the bricabrac dealers, the flower-sellers, the fried fish shops, and the small craftsmen. He must have heard the rushing of time; and it must have sounded like the beginning of a stampede.