The Photographer of Paris

A young man sits marooned on an island of excavated earth, overlooking a desolate construction site; his gaze stares across an opening in the ground, where the sprawl of shacks lie, like the invisible sediment found carpeting the bottom of the ocean. The young man takes no notice of the sediment; instead he seems transfixed by the surrounding structures hovering in the distance. They stand tall, proud, waiting to occult the sediment. 

“Top of the rue Champlain”, photographed by Charles Marville in 1872, is now an iconic picture of the reconstruction of Paris, not only because of the depiction of the stagnation of time, but also because of the displacement, isolation and loss felt by tens of thousands of people. This image is one of many of Marville’s images that are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, in New York, from January 29th until May 4th. 

During the Second Empire (1852-1871), it was proposed that the city of Paris should be rebuilt, and by the early years of the Third Republic, the transformation was complete. No longer was Paris a crumbling ruin of small, congested, labyrinthian streets; instead, it was transformed into ‘The City of Lights’. Grand boulevards replaced the squalid slums. Intricately designed gas lamps lined the avenues, illuminating the broad walkways and, in turn, creating an open, energetic social hub.

Outdoor marchés, kiosks and cafes burst into the seams of Parisian life, and the elite of France found sanctuary in the Haussmann-esque architectural facade that coated the city. Cultural spaces and significant monuments were now centred by long avenues, and this, in turn, created major intersections for the bourgeoisie to admire French history.

Charles Marville, was commissioned by the city of Paris to document this radical urban modernization, and it is because of this that he was known as the ‘Photographer of Paris’.

 Born Charles-Francois Bossu in 1813, the photographer took on a pseudonym when he began his career as an illustrator. He worked for book publishers and magazines, before venturing into the exponential realm of photography in the early 1850’s. Marville initially collaborated with artists and architects, sometimes to reproduce drawings, or designs, or to photograph different stages of construction, or restoration of sculptures. 

By the late 1850’s he began to photograph the reconstruction of Paris, capturing condemned roads and housing. He then proceeded to document the resurrection of Baron Haussmann's boulevards, parks and public spaces. During these moments, Marville executed his exceptional photographic skills to capture long exposure shots, usually taking 15 minutes to generate, thus resulting in deserted environments. He returned 10 years later to complete the project by revisiting the sites he had photographed, after which, all images were presented at the 1878 Exposition Universelle.

The beauty of this exhibition lies in the detail of Marville’s work, and the curatorial competence of Sarah Kennel, the Associate Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art. When the viewer enters the room, a heavy velvet curtain, containing a light sensitive image made on salt paper, attached with a warning sign, greets them.  This is a strange concept for visitors – even more bizarre are the dimensions of the photographs, which are very small in comparison to prints for contemporary photography exhibitions.

Each image included in the series was printed with extreme care. Sometimes it is an albumen silver print made from a glass negative, or a salt print on paper negative; both processes are rarely used today.  These methods give black and white photography a distinct flavour. Firstly, they are not glossy, secondly, they usually have a reddish brown tinge, and lastly, they can almost look like an illustration because the grain is very fine. Alternative printing processes give the viewer a relatively unfamiliar version of reality, when compared to images produced by an iPhone.

Despite the lack of severe black and white tones in Marvilles series, there is still a prevalent austerity in the framing of his work, that of which is similar to the images of those photographers commissioned by French banker Albert Kahn. Though these are separate bodies of work, they share a correlating ideology, and that is to document what once was. There is historical value in Marvilles work because it depicts two worlds, the past and the future, colliding in the, then, present. The extinction of cultures and societies is a natural evolution, however visual evidence, such as photographs, aids in preserving, and even honouring the past.

Now, as Susan Sontag described in her book On Photography, “photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing”. Photography is no longer about the preservation of history, instead photography has become disposable, just a byproduct of a modern consumerist society.

Photographic series, such as Marville’s, have become increasingly important in the 21st century. Not only because it is evidence of a past long gone, but because it is imagery that is not disposable, you can only see it once, twice if you are lucky, and then the viewer must clutch firmly to the memories of its imprint.