Recording the Old & New Paris

By the 1860s, Haussmann’s new vision of Paris was beginning to take shape and many Parisian photographers recognised the importance to capture what remained of the one time medieval streets and buildings prior to their demolition. By this time photography had established itself as a key instrument for process of documenting and recording and helped to describe the time difference between the subject depicted and the viewer. It became apparent that a part of Paris’s history could be swept away forever and that photography was the best ‘function’ for recording what was left during the fast modern changing pace of the city.

The old structures which were not part of Haussmann’s grand modernisation plan suddenly became the focus subject of many photographers. The old slums and cramped and narrow streets were to be photographed from every angle conceivable in order to comprehensively record what was to be lost forever.

Many photographs of this nature were captured by Charles Marville. He recorded Old Paris, prior to its demolition to make way for Haussmann’s new boulevards. Oliver Wendell Holme’s theory on the use of photograph’s ability of recording was that “give us a few negatives of a thing worth seeing taken from different points of view, that is all we want of it. Pull it down or burn it up if you please”.

Marville was one of many ‘record-keepers’ as Baudelaire referred them as. His work forms a photographic archive spanning Haussmann’s grand transformations of Paris. Between 1861 and 1871, Marville chronologically recorded one of the most widely known of Hausmann’s changes, that been the demolition, excavations and construction of the new Opera building, including its grand frontal edifice and its approach avenue. This was only a small example of the work carried out by what became known as Paris’s ‘official photographer’, as evidenced by his commission by the official publication ‘Topographie Historique de Vieux Paris’, in 1863 to record over 420 views of the streets labeled for demolition as part of Haussmann’s modernisation plan.

In contrast, following his completion of this work in 1863, he was then call upon to record Hausmann’s new streets, which created a conclusion to his work of recording the new & old Paris. These latter images captured the wide nature of the boulevards and the new building  that were no longer presented in an ‘irregular cluster’ but now in ‘uniform blocks of glass and masonry facades’.  Similarly to the new architectural designs which featured wide sheet glass windows at street level, the images capture a new social form emerging from Paris at the time, that of window shopping. This type of structure design would be incorporated into newly built arcades, establishing a new age of commerce in the city and helped by the increase of markets that could now be accommodated in the wide open streets, to which Parisian took pride of.

Marville’s first commission records what has been from the city of Paris but emphasises photography’s importance with recording the modern changes that were taking place in the city.

Eugene Atget was another well known French photographer whose work concentrated on recording the old Paris, prior to its demolition. He considered his images to be ‘documents’. They depicted many old restaurants and shops found in Paris at the time, whose windows reflected the open banks of the Seine, as well as his camera, almost merging the old and new on the photograph. Similarly to Marville, Atget sought out demolition sites that were appearing all around Paris during the Haussmann transition. He also recorded old shops fronts that were soon to give way to taller modern structures befitting the grand boulevards to where they were constructed. The reflections captured in the window would be something that Parisians would soon become accustomed to when the arcades and commercial districts of the city came into being. These visual effects would lend themselves to artistic photographers like Atget, who took advantage of the shop windows. He produced a series of photographs depicting old traditional Parisian restaurants, one of which ‘Au Tambour, 63 quai de la Tournelle’ almost seem to fit into a story with the occupants captured in almost time warp of the old Paris. From the 1860s onwards, photographers like Atget took advantage of the developments with faster shutter speeds on cameras which helped capture Haussmann’s new boulevards alive with commerce and animated by the ‘urban populace’. The idea of photographing structures that were soon to succumb to modernisation or age quickly spread to other European cities, and similarly to Marville’s photographs, the photographer Joly de Lotbiniere recorded (in addition to the exact time & date) the Parthenon, because the ‘celebrated ruins might sustain further changes in appearance’.