A peanut seller in a cloud of steam, an old Model T among 1940s New York taxis, and haunting views of old Paris: these photos capture two great cities as they once were

It’s Manhattan, 1945. A peanut seller leans on his cart as steam billows from the roaster. Signs offer fresh roasted peanuts for five cents.

A year later, on Fifth Avenue, an ageing Model T Ford rattles along incongruously beside a contemporary 1940s taxi, like a visitor from another era.

Both of these pictures were taken by American photographer Todd Webb, who spent the post-war years capturing life in New York and Paris. He was inspired by the French photographer Eugène Atget, who’d done similar work in Paris decades earlier, when the discipline was in its infancy.

Now, for the first time, their photography is being shown side by side in a new exhibition, Todd Webb & Eugène Atget: Senses of Place. MUUS Collection is presenting it at Paris Photo, at the Grand Palais in Paris.

A pioneer in Paris

At the turn of the 20th century, Atget captured the streets, shopfronts and markets of Paris. His pictures in the show include a cobbled street curving past the Gothic walls of the Église Saint-Séverin, and a flower market by the Seine.

When Webb was introduced to Atget’s work by fellow American photographer Berenice Abbott, he sensed a guiding spirit, something you can see in his own Paris pictures.

In one, an ornately carved doorway stands half open onto a shadowy courtyard. In another, the camera peeks through a stone arch towards a riverside path lined with trees, bathed in heavenly light.

In a third, two boys stand on a cobbled street, one clutching a ball, both clutching their jackets in a way that suggests trepidation.

What unites these photographs with that of Atget’s is they both pull you into a scene, not by showing you everything, but in contrast, making you wonder, want to look around the corner to see more.

Webb’s New York pictures take a similar approach. One looks across from the elevated Third Avenue railway at a run-down building covered in faded signs. Another combines the grand columns of the New York Stock Exchange with the dark silhouette of a George Washington statue.

A subtle interplay

The similarities between the two photographers are fascinating, but they’re not the whole story. Curator David Campany points out that this is not a simple case of one copying another. “In their curiosity and openness Todd Webb’s photographs have a deep kinship with the work of Atget,” he explains. It was not so much a case of influence, as affirmation.

“It is always heartening for a photographer to recognise a forebear,” he adds. “Atget offered Webb a licence, wide and generous, to push his commitment to photography as both document and social poetry.”

Todd Webb & Eugène Atget: Senses of Place is at Paris Photo, Grand Palais, 3 Avenue du Général Eisenhower, Paris, on booth P01, from November 12 to 15 2026. Opening hours are 1pm to 8pm, closing at 7pm on Sunday.

David Campany will give a talk at the Grand Palais on Wednesday November 11, the day before the fair opens. On November 14, MUUS Collection will also announce the winner of its first Research Fellowship.