In her influential essay, "Photography's Discursive Spaces," first published in 1982, Rosalind Krauss objects to what she considers the misappropriation of nineteenth-century photographic "views" into the canon of the modern art museum, and suggests that such standard art historical categories as "artist," "career" and "oeuvre," do not apply to documentary work of a prior era.

For Abigail Solomon-Godeau Atget is a holdover from the nineteenth century, not a romantic, experimental modernist artist. He works in working in a documentary style. Should Atget only be seen within the historical context of his own ambitions and prospects? Or should we follow the Surrealists and take Atget out of his historical context?