PHILADELPHIA—Although French photographer Eugene Atget considered himself a documentarian, not an artist, his work was nonetheless embraced by artists from the surrealists in 1920s Paris to the street photographers of post-World War II New York.

Atget (1857-1927), considered a father of modern photography, is the focus of a new exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art showcasing about 140 images, from shop windows and street corners to Versailles statuary and Paris prostitutes.

After stints as a sailor and an actor, Atget turned to commercial photography in the late 1890s. He created some 10,000 photographs during his career, carrying around a large-format camera through the streets and parks in and around Paris.

"He never treated his photographs as finished works of art," said Peter Barberie, curator of the exhibition. "He composed them to be finished by artists, stage set designers, furniture makers and others who bought the images as studies for their own projects."

His customers also included libraries, architects and antiquarians who were seeking documentation of Paris for future reference.

The photographs on display are among about 360 of Atget's works, and 2,500 images in all, acquired by the museum in 2001 from the estate of famed New York art dealer Julien Levy. The museum is planning an exhibition next year, to commemorate Levy's 100th birthday, with additional works from the Levy collection.

Many of the images in the Philadelphia show, which runs through Nov. 27, 2005, are prints that were done by photographer Berenice Abbott from Atget's negatives; her starkly contrasted black-and-white pictures are shown side-by-side with Atget's earlier, softer toned prints from the same negative.

His photographs of sculptures at Versailles, often dreamlike and almost animated, and his Paris storefronts, with their disconcerting mannequins in corsets or bowler hats, captivated the French avant-garde.

Man Ray, who lived in the same Paris neighborhood as Atget, purchased a number of Atget's prints and introduced the older man's work to the young upstarts in the surrealist movement. Yet Atget apparently was not bowled over by their attentions.

When Man Ray asked permission to publish one of his photographs (a crowd watching an eclipse) in his surrealist journal, Atget replied, "Don't put my name on it. These are simply documents I make."

"He saw these (photographs) as history, not as art," Barberie said.

Levy and Abbott were introduced to his work by Man Ray and are credited with bringing Atget to American audiences through a series of publications and exhibitions they organized in the 1930s.

The street scenes featuring prostitutes, rag pickers, butcher shops and street vendors, can be seen in the works of American photographers from Walker Evans and Robert Frank to Diane Arbus.

"Although he was not well-known during his lifetime," said Katherine Ware, the museum's curator of photographs, "Atget's visual record of a vanishing world became an inspiration for many important 20th-century photographers."

By Joann Loviglio, Associated Press Writer; Copyright AP 2005