George Hendrik Breitner was a Dutch Impressionist painter, a contemporary of Van Gogh, who he painted alongside in France for a while. Breitner began taking photographs to use as a reference for his paintings, but also used photography itself as an art medium.
Like his paintings, Breitner’s photos are concerned less with sharpness and fidelity than with motion and atmosphere.
The haphazard snaps never seem still, recording huddled and hurried pedestrians in the rain, the play of light on cobblestones, and the endless rush of working people from one task to another.
See a collection of Breitner's photographs of Amsterdam from the Dutch National Museum, taken between 1890 and 1910, at Mashable.