Paris Changing

Christopher Rauschenberg

Paris

Changing
Revisiting Eugne Atgets Paris
With essays by Clark Worswick, Alison Nordstrom, and Rosamond Bernier

Princeton Architectural Press, New York

Published by Princeton Architectural Press 37 East Seventh Street New York, New York 10003 For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657. Visit our website at www.papress.com. 2007 Princeton Architectural Press All rights reserved Printed and bound in China 10 09 08 07 5 4 3 2 1 First edition No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions. All photographs by Christopher Rauschenberg unless otherwise noted. Courtesy the Bibliothque nationale de France: front cover (bottom left), pages 8 (top and bottom left), 20, 24, 26, 28, 30, 34, 36, 42, 44, 48, 50, 52, 54, 56, 58, 60, 66, 70, 80, 90, 92, 94, 104, 108, 112, 118, 120, 126, 138, 148, 150, 152, 154, 156, 158, 160, 162, 164, 166, 168, 170, 172, 174, 176 Courtesy the Parisienne de Photographie: front cover (top left), back cover (left), pages 22, 32, 38, 40, 46, 62, 64, 68, 72, 74, 76, 82, 84, 86, 88, 96, 98, 100, 102, 106, 110, 114, 116, 122, 124, 128, 130, 132, 136, 140, 142, 144 Editing: Nicola Bednarek Design: Jan Haux Maps: Matt Knutzen Special thanks to: Nettie Aljian, Sara Bader, Dorothy Ball, Janet Behning, Becca Casbon, Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Russell Fernandez, Peter Fitzpatrick, Wendy Fuller, Clare Jacobson, John King, Nancy Eklund Later, Linda Lee, Katharine Myers, Lauren Nelson Packard, Jennifer Thompson, Arnoud Verhaeghe, Paul Wagner, Joseph Weston, and Deb Wood of Princeton Architectural Press Kevin C. Lippert, publisher Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rauschenberg, Christopher, 1951 Paris changing : revisiting Eugene Atgets Paris / Christopher Rauschenberg ; with essays by Clark Worswick, Alison Nordstrom, and Rosamond Bernier. p. cm. ISBN-13: 978-1-56898-680-7 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-56898-680-7 (alk. paper) 1. Photography, Artistic. 2. Paris (France)Pictorial works. 3. Rauschenberg, Christopher, 1951 4. Atget, Eugne, 18571927. I. Atget, Eugne, 18571927. II. Worswick, Clark. III. Nordstrm, Alison Devine. IV. Bernier, Rosamond. V. Title. TR654.R3386 2007 779.944361dc22 2007005569

Contents
7

Acknowledgments Preface Revisiting Eugne Atgets Paris

Clark Worswick

10

14

Reconsidering Atget
Alison Nordstrom

Plates
18 78 134 146

Arrondissements 1, 2, 3 & 4 Arrondissements 5, 6 & 14 Arrondissements 18, 19 & 20 Saint-Cloud, Versailles, Sceaux

179

Paris Regained
Rosamond Bernier

182

In Atgets Shoes
Christopher Rauschenberg

Acknowledgments
First of all, I would like to thank my mother, Susan Weil Kirschenbaum, who taught me photography and taught me to love Atget. I would also like to thank my agent Robert Morton for believing in the idea; Alison Devine Nordstrom for making a dream come true exhibifor helping me to find the reproduction prints used in this book; and Mark Klett, Ellen tion of this project at the George Eastman House; Franoise Reynaud of the Muse Carnavalet Manchester, and JoAnn Verburg for inspiring rephotographers everywhere. The Bibliothque nationale de France and the Photothque des muses de la Ville de Paris kindly granted permission to reproduce the photos by Atget contained in this book.

Preface

Christopher Rauschenberg

Eugne Atget photographed Paris from 1888 until his death in 1927. Like many people, I consider him the greatest photographer of all time. He documented the city in a straightforward way, his images evoking the feeling that all the transitory things that people make, all the things they do, are washed away, leaving only their transcendent evidence.

out in books and museum shows whenever possible. On a trip to Paris in 1989, I suddenly

I have known Atgets works from my earliest days as a photographer, seeking them

found myself face to face with a spiral-topped gatepost that I knew very well from a photo-

graph by Atget (opposite, top left). I rephotographed his gatepost from memory (opposite, top right) and wondered how many other Atget subjects might still be holding their poses. When I found a familiar-looking stone stairway in another neighborhood, I looked around for the vase on a corner post, but I could not find it. The flower vase on the other side of the stairs, however, did have a tree behind it, so I photographed that side instead (opposite, bottom the magnificent tree was gone. huge, beautiful tree that in Atgets photograph (opposite, bottom left) loomed over a flower

right). I wanted to match the poetic meaning of the image more than I wanted to show that In Paris that year, in the streets and places that Atget had admired, I resolved to return

and explore with my camera whether the haunting and beautiful city of his vision still existed. Between 1997 and 1998, I made three trips to Paris and rephotographed five hundred of the had pictured or recapture the people in his views.)

outdoor scenes that Atget had photographed. (I could not, of course, revisit the interiors that he In this book seventy-five of the pairs of images are published, clearly showing that

the Paris of Atgets vision still exists and is available to eyes that look for it. In central Paris, in see the effects of weathering and acid rain on them; you can see the disrespectful marks of graffiti; and most of all, you can see that the magical streets of the city are choked with traffic and parked cars. However, among all the other Parises that coexist so thickly in one amazing metropolis, Atgets Paris is still definitely and hauntingly there. particular, most of the places that Atget photographed are still there, and still posing. You can

Revisiting Eugne Atgets Paris

Clark Worswick
Practically no artist I know of has left the world with what is commonly received as the seminal vision of an epoch. Yet, just such a vision was left by perhaps Frances greatest the years 1897 and 1927 defined not only a city but an entire eraFrances belle epoch. photographer of the twentieth century, Eugne Atget. His documentation of Paris between Born in 1857, Atget was, by unlikely turns, first a cabin boy and then a sailor on the French Transatlantic runs. He later became a provincial actor and, finally, a photographer. The curiosity of his great accomplishment is that during the first part of the twentieth century, so neglected and modest was his work, so lonely was his obsessive grand passion for the documentation of Paris that the artist virtually starved to death. When he died in 1927, Atget had been utterly forgotten by his contemporaries except for a few of his closest friends. Today, eighty years after his death, we realize how this humble street photographer

changed the way we look at both modernism and art. Aside from the manifest debts that modernism owes him, Atget left us with a vision of the world he inhabited that is both and his motivations for undertaking his lifes work.

particular and unique. But despite his monumental uvre we know very little about Atget Atget was born in the southwest region of Gironde in Libourne in 1857. Orphaned

at the age of seven, he was raised by his uncle, who was a stationmaster in the department of railways. Making a living first as a cabin boy and as a sailor, he later became a member of a provincial theatrical repertory company and finally settled in Paris sometime in the rapid rectilinear lens that captured images on 18-by-24-cm photosensitized glass plates. mid-1890s, where he purchased his first camera in 1897. It was made of walnut and had a The impetus that appears to have sparked Atgets interest in photography was a historical commission from the municipality of Paris to document the sections of old Paris, though how he got this commission is unknown. This work marks the beginning of his career as a know nothing about why he chose this profession. A closer examination of his work habits left with nothing so much as mysteries of the human heart. We know only the barest facts

photographer, but even though innumerable historians have studied Atget and his work, we and life is a slow processlike peeling back an onion layer by layerand at the end one is of how Atget came to define his subtractive, objectivist vision. And we know even less about what impelled him to produce the great work that came to consume the last three decades of his life.

10

footsteps of a number of other French photographers whom he had perhaps never heard of. Chief amongst them were Charles Ngre, Edouard Baldus, and Gustave LeGray. Charles Marville, who also began working in the 1850s, produced a suite of photographs of Paris in connection with Baron Haussmanns renovation of the city in the 1860s, which radically photographic documents of Paris and its buildings. changed its physical look. During the same decade, the Bisson brothers also made important Though images of European urban buildings and cityscapes were much in vogue

In undertaking his documentation of Paris, Atget followed in the well-trodden

during the 1850s through the 1890sthe works of J. Craig Annan in Glasgow, Dixon & Boole in London, and Robert MacPherson, James Anderson, and Fratelli Alinari in Italy come to mindby the time Atget took up photographing Paris between 1897 and 1899, the docu-

mentation of European urban subjects by commercial photographers was drawing to a close. wielding Kodak cameras, the world-wide demand for commercial photography of urban scenes went into a steep and radical decline. Somehow, however, by some fluke of a

During the later part of the 1890s, an era that increasingly came to be dominated by amateurs

problematic spirit, Atgets career as a documentarian of Paris flourished at that exact moment. sell pictures in 1899 to the Muse Carnavalet, a museum devoted to the history of Paris. Having formed a connection with this established museum, in the next decades he would sell his phothe Bibliothque National, the Bibliothque de lEcole des Beaux-Arts, the Ecole Boulle, the tographs to a range of institutions, among them the Bibliothque Historique de la Ville de Paris, Bibliothque du Muse de Sculpture Decoratifs, and the Muse du Sculpture. Early in his career After his 1897 work for the commission to document historic Paris, Atget managed to

Atget also worked on photographs that he called documents pour artistes, which were bought and used as pictorial motifs by the painters Maurice Utrillo, Andr Dunoyer de Segonzac, Georges Braque, Andr Derain, and Maurice de Vlaminck, as well as Man Ray during the

1920s. These images certainly contributed to and shaped Atgets vision of the documentary.

Between 1897 and 1927, capturing the life and scenes of Paris with his modest plate camera and tripod became something like Atgets private work, which he pursued daily on his

His most important uvre, though, would occupy the photographer for thirty years.

solitary rounds around the city. It became Atgets grand and impossible mission to preserve everything in Paris that was evanescent and vanishing from the ancien rgime: the architecturethe citys great public buildings, churches, residences, restaurants, and storesits

people and their trades, as well as its vehicles. He often documented empty streets bereft of dividing an entire city into phylum and sub-phylum where each species is categorized,

inhabitants at dawn and dusk. Sometimes I think of Atget as a kind of grand, agitated botanist

named, and described. Atgets patience was almost glacialI know of no other photographer

11

among his contemporaries who embarked upon such a vast project of a single place. He even escaped his eye.

took pictures of the root structure of trees and the foliage of Paris at different seasons. Nothing Although Atget sold his photographs, he received very little for them. Still, he

managed to continue his project and thus was free from the usual constraints that come with pher had ever traversed. On his fragile glass plates, with his old-fashioned plate camera,

a commercial photographers clientele. In his work, he traveled into realms that no photograAtget photographed the streets and shops of Montmartre and the Quartier Latin; he photocity as well as Versailles, St. Cloud, and Fontainebleu. He took thousands of photographs

graphed shop window displays, bourgeois interiors, merry-go-rounds, and the gardens of the of buildings that lined the streets of Paris and their embellished facades. He paid particular ornately carved doorways, grills, elaborately worked glass windows, staircases, stucco the entire city.

attention to the decorations of Parisian architecture in the form of door knockers, shop signs, ornamentations, and courtyards. Over time, his passion for documenting came to encompass During his working life as a photographer, Atget had a diverse clientele, ranging

from set designers, artists, and antiquarians, to the building industry, publishers, and academics. Today, books published with his photographs have appeared in almost countless numbers in literally scores of languages, and it has become commonplace to reference the bolize both objectivism in modern art and the look of Frances belle epoch. This vision of

city of Paris and Atgets documentation of it in the same sentence. His work has come to symPariss recent past is not only populated by many of Frances greatest architectural treasures but alsothough they are not shown in this bookby a vast gallery of Parisian human rag pickers, prostitutes, and Parisian street pavers. types ranging from street singers to gypsies, basket sellers, peasants harvesting their crops, The photographic historian Molly Nesbit has laboriously counted the number of

prints that Atget sold to the different organs of the French statesome 16,758 prints are held by various French institutions. Nevertheless, at the time of his death Atget was so forgotten that not a single volume of his work had appeared since he had self-published the portfolio LArt dans le Vieux Paris in 1909. In 1927, after Atgets death, his executor Andr Calmette

sold for an unrecorded amount some 8,000 prints and 1,400 negatives to the young American photographer Berenice Abbott, who apparently was the one person in the world still interested in Atgets lifes work. For the next forty years Abbott spent much of her time making the receiving few rewards and mostly indifferenceAbbott arranged exhibitions of Atgets

world aware of Atgets great achievement. In a saga that is almost breathtaking in its dedication

photographs, encouraged the publication of books about his work, and in her darkroom

12

painstakingly continued to reproduce the forgotten photographers images. One of the best

technicians of her generation, she made carefully crafted prints of her own selection of Atgets unfailing in her efforts to make Atgets work known to the world, she was also inspired by him to undertake her own documentation of a citythat of Depression-era New York.

negatives on heavily impregnated silver-coated photographic papers. But not only was Abbott

and mount exhibitions of his work, Abbott had, during the early years of the Depression,

to buy her collection of Atgets works. In order to be able to afford printing Atgets negatives

Finally, in the late 1960s, the Museum of Modern Art in New York approached Abbott

entered into a financial transaction with the gallery owner Julien Levy for what amounted to a half interest in her collection. For her share of Atgets prints and negatives that she had saved from oblivion she received from the Museum of Modern Art $25,000, a little more than $3 a print. Today, the prices for select individual photographs later deaccessioned by the museum are nearing the sixty thousand dollar mark. Talking about the pictures Atget sold during his lifetime, Abbott once remarked: The price of his photographs was indicative of the value The prices ranged from .25 to 1.25 francs in 1911. A terrible irony connects these two

placed on photographs by this French clientele. Masterpieces of photography sold for pennies. artiststhey received virtually no financial rewards for their work during their lifetime, yet artistic immortality has touched them both. I think it was Abbott who best defined Atgets great achievement. She described

Goethes fascination with the pinnacle of artistic accomplishment as an imagination for imagination for reality.

reality. This is perhaps the only description that does justice to Atgets visionhe had an It is utterly impossible for the modern viewer to look at Atgets Paris without

feeling nostalgic for what we have lost. The new city of Paris that now encircles the landscape of Atgets pictures is often an exercise in soulless scale with flat, vertical concrete planes and easily aged glass walls that leak. It is a world of temporary workmanship. Todays Paris,

like most cities in the world, suffers from architectural blight and a mirror-like samenesslike international airports set in the landscape of nowhere. In the gigantism of a machine-produced world, what we have lost is a human scale in our cities. In Atgets images we can marvel at Paris, frozen forever at the moment of la belle

epoch. In his remarkable rephotography project Christopher Rauschenbergs absolute passion for the work of Atget is clear. With unfailing patience and meticulous craftsmanship he has rediscovered the world of Atgets ancien rgime. His accomplishment is almost archaeological images that Atgets Paris is in front of us still. Rauschenbergs photographs document the temporary architecture.

in its intent. Moving a few trash baskets aside and waiting for cars to leave, he shows us in his unique beauty of this great city, its heart still pulsing underneath the layers of indifferent con-

13

Reconsidering Atget
Alison Nordstrom
Rephotography is a practice inherent in the nature of its medium. The cameras almost magical ability to freeze and isolate time and space manifests the specificity of moments and particular places. As we cannot in real life, we hold these visions in our hands and at our can know the subjects it traces and transforms. This knowledge, and the way it shapes moments, sometimes in an attempt to replicate, sometimes to document change, and sometimes to celebrate, better understand, and appreciate other, earlier eyes. leisure. The photograph permits detailed observation, contemplation, and comparison: we our ongoing looking, has moved innumerable photographers to capture subsequent parallel

apart, in 1857 and 1951 respectively. The nineteenth-century man came to Paris as it rushed precipitously from its lingering trace of the ancient to take its place as a modern European inevitable disappearance; his venerable faces, rude cobbles, and mysterious doors and capital. His photographs were deliberate attempts to preserve the old before its apparently stairways take on particular poignancy. The occasional flashes of elongated blurred light in his imagesin actuality a subject in motion too fast for accurate capture by Atgets slow In contrast, Rauschenberg came to Paris seeking to identify and preserve, not only some and created photographically, with all its emotional qualities. shutterfeel like brash harbingers of the future intruding on the brooking silence of the past. vision of premodern Paris, but the very premodern Paris that Atget himself had established The varied practices of rephotography defy precise definition, though we understand

Eugne Atget and Christopher Rauschenberg were born nearly one hundred years

that more elements are involved than a simple re-rendering of something photographed

before. Thus, the ubiquitous images of the Egyptian pyramids, though popular to this day, should not usually be understood as a reference to the Zangaki Brothers or Francis Frith. They are simply an ongoing manifestation of a persistent visual icon and marker of place. It is unlikely that later photographers of Egypt, whether amateur or professional, studied the works of their forebears with the intention of commenting on them. Though making pictures of what has already been photographically portrayed has been common since the process was invented, intentional rephotographic projects are tellingly recent innovations. Their

prevalence today points to the emergence of a full-fledged history of photography, the desire of the notion that photographs work best as conceptual projects.

of artists to situate their work within the context of that history, and, perhaps, the ascendance

14

Nixons ongoing thirty-year study of his wife and her sisters, remind us that the subjects of these temporal taxonomies may be human, and painfully mortal at that, recent rephotographic projects are most commonly associated with place. Many of the best known of these are feats of technical precisions and historical explication. Douglas Levere, for example, Levere revisited Abbotts original sites at the exact times of day and year that the original began a project in 1977 that replicated Berenice Abbotts 1939 survey, Changing New York.

While Milton Rogovins depiction of families in Buffalo, New York and Nicholas

photographs were captured, strictly replicating Abbotts camera angles and depth of field. In his search for veracity, he even employed the very camera Abbott had used. The result was and technological change, and encourage meticulous back-and-forth comparisons of the more than one hundred pairs of then and now images that stand as a record of architectural visual information they contain. A single photograph gives the illusion that time stops. A that Berenice Abbott understood well. . . . Change is the only permanence.

rephotograph lifts that illusion, asserts Levere. In this tangle of old and new. . . lies the truth Such flux is also the emphasis of Matthew Buckinghams 2005 study One Side of

Broadway, an homage to Rudolph De Leeuws 1910 survey Both Sides of Broadway, which

documented every building on that famed New York City thoroughfare between Bowling Green and Columbus Circle. Presented as a slide installation, Buckinghams visual index activities that occurred in the buildings, with emphasis on early photographic studios is also a vehicle for the presentation of historical factoids, as a voice-over notes the events and and cinemas. In a similar venture, Omar Khans pioneering 1995 experiment in multimedia, Through a Magic Lantern: Jacksons India, 1895, uses interactive digital technologies to meld through South Asia with Khans own replication of them made one hundred years later. the last decades are the Second View and Third View projects led by Mark Klett in the William Henry Jacksons photochromes and lantern slides of a thousand-mile rail journey Perhaps the most well-known and complex rephotographic surveys undertaken in

1970s and again in the late 1990s. These projects were based on the western geological survey images of William Bell, John K. Hilliers, William Henry Jackson, and Timothy OSullivan, which had been made immediately after the Civil War, and were, in most cases, the earliest his teams made multiple images at the site of each historical photograph with an eye to

images ever taken of that part of the world. In both Second View and Third View, Klett and precise imitation. Vantage points, weather conditions, lighting, and seasons were replicated as exactly as possible. The original photographs stand as a baseline against which subsequent dramatize this change; but, significantly, the third views, made in most cases only twenty years after the second, reveal the most dramatic transformations. change can be visualized and evaluated. The second views, made more than a century later,

15

Rauschenbergs treatment of Atgets Paris demonstrates that rephotography can also reveal the persistence and consistency of certain visual themes. Rauschenberg has chosen not to replicate Atgets equipment, stance, or time of day. Rather, his images are a reference to the

Most of the rephotographic projects considered here call attention to change, but

distinctive mood and characteristics of the earlier photographs. In some, it is a familiar and In others, it is an almost ineffable emotional nuance that evokes the already-seen in similar doorways and staircases to those Atget knew. The invention of the camera has changed not only how and what we see, but how

singular object, such as a dress-shaped hanging sign, that marks a site as reminiscent of Atget.

and what we remember. Rauschenberg was seventeen when he first saw Paris, but he was

distinguished predecessor, he has given us both another frozen moment in the flux of a vital city and a comment on the photographs as history and art.

already a photographer and already familiar with Atgets work. In creating this homage to his

16

Plates

Arrondissements 1, 2, 3 & 4
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

The Abduction of Djanire, by Marqueste, jardin des Tuileries (pp. 2021) Jardin des Tuileries (pp. 2223) Jardin des Tuileries (pp. 2425) Au Bon Jardinier, quai de la Mgisserie/La Passion du Jardin, quai de la Mgisserie (pp. 2627) Maison du Sphinx, 31 rue Saint-Denis (pp. 2829) Intersection of rue de la Grande-Truanderie and rue Pierre-Lescot (pp. 3031) Saint-Eustache Church and rue du Jour (pp.3233) Former home of the choir school of Saint-Eustache Church, 25 rue du Jour (pp. 3435) Htel des abbs de Royaumont, 4 rue du Jour (pp. 3637) Fontaine de lArbre-Sec (pp. 3839) Door, 6 rue Saint-Florentin (pp. 4041) Jardin du Palais-Royal (pp. 4243) Place Sainte-Opportune (pp. 4445) Galerie Colbert, rue Vivienne (pp. 4647) Corner of passage Basfour, 176 rue Saint-Denis (pp. 4849) Corner of rue Saint-Spire and rue Sainte-Foy (pp. 5051) House where Andr Chnier lived in 1793, 97 rue de Clry (pp. 5253) Old house and old boutique, 3 rue Volta/Old house, 3 rue Volta (pp. 5455) Rue Dupetit-Thouars (pp. 5657) Rue de la Normandie (pp. 5859) 46 rue des Archives (pp. 6061) Fontaine des Haudriettes, rue des Haudriettes (pp. 6263) Maison de Nicolas Flamel, 51 rue Montmorency (pp. 6465) Rue Saint-Bon (pp. 6667) Htel des Ambassadeurs de Hollande, 47 rue Vieille-du-Temple (pp. 68-69) 13 rue Franois-Miron (pp. 7071) Caf, 62 rue de lHtel-de-Ville (pp. 7273) Rue des Nonnains-dHyres/Rue de Fourcy (pp. 7475) Rue des Ursins (pp. 7677)

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The Abduction of Djanire, by Marqueste, jardin des Tuileries, 1907 08

20

The Abduction of Djanire, by Marqueste, jardin des Tuileries, 1998

21

Jardin des Tuileries, 1907

22

Jardin des Tuileries, 1998

23

Jardin des Tuileries, 1907

24

Jardin des Tuileries, 1998

25

Au Bon Jardinier, quai de la Mgisserie, 1902

26

La Passion du Jardin, quai de la Mgisserie, 1997

27

Maison du Sphinx, 31 rue Saint-Denis, 1907

28

31 rue Saint-Denis, 1997

29

Intersection of rue de la Grande-Truanderie and rue Pierre-Lescot, 1907

30

Intersection of rue de la Grande-Truanderie and rue Pierre-Lescot, 1998

31

Saint-Eustache Church and rue du Jour, 1902

32

Saint-Eustache Church and rue du Jour, 1997

33

Former home of the choir school of Saint-Eustache Church, 25 rue du Jour, 1902

34

Former home of the choir school of Saint-Eustache Church, 25 rue du Jour, 1998

35

Htel des abbs de Royaumont, 4 rue du Jour, 1907

36

Htel des abbs de Royaumont, 4 rue du Jour, 1997

37

Fontaine de lArbre-Sec, 1899

38

Fontaine de lArbre-Sec, 1997

39

Door, 6 rue Saint-Florentin, 1912

40

Door, 6 rue Saint-Florentin, 1998

41

Jardin du Palais-Royal, 1905

42

Jardin du Palais-Royal, 1998

43

Place Sainte-Opportune, 1907

44

Place Sainte-Opportune, 1997

45

Galerie Colbert, rue Vivienne, 1906

46

Galerie Colbert, rue Vivienne, 1997

47

Corner of passage Basfour, 176 rue Saint-Denis, 1907

48

Corner of passage Basfour, 176 rue Saint-Denis, 1998

49

Corner of rue Saint-Spire and rue Sainte-Foy, about to be demolished for the extension of rue Dussoubs, 1907

50

Corner of rue Saint-Spire and rue Sainte-Foy, 1998

51

House where Andr Chnier lived in 1793, 97 rue de Clry, 1907

52

House where Andr Chnier lived in 1793, 97 rue de Clry, 1997

53

Old house and old boutique, 3 rue Volta, 1901

54

Old house, 3 rue Volta, 1998

55

Rue Dupetit-Thouars, 1911

56

Rue Dupetit-Thouars, 1998

57

Rue de la Normandie, 1901

58

Rue de la Normandie, 1998

59

46 rue des Archives, 1901

60

46 rue des Archives, 1997

61

Fontaine des Haudriettes, rue des Haudriettes, 1898

62

Fontaine des Haudriettes, rue des Haudriettes, 1997

63

Maison de Nicolas Flamel, 51 rue Montmorency, 1902

64

Maison de Nicolas Flamel, 51 rue Montmorency, 1998

65

Rue Saint-Bon, 1903

66

Rue Saint-Bon, 1998

67

Htel des Ambassadeurs de Hollande, 47 rue Vieille-du-Temple, 1898

68

Htel des Ambassadeurs de Hollande, 47 rue Vieille-du-Temple, 1997

69

13 rue Franois-Miron, 1902

70

13 rue Franois-Miron, 1998

71

Caf, 62 rue de lHtel-de-Ville, 1903

72

Caf, 62 rue de lHtel-de-Ville, 1997

73

Rue des Nonnains-dHyres, 1900

74

Rue de Fourcy, 1998

75

Rue des Ursins, 1900

76

Rue des Ursins, 1998

77

Arrondissements 5, 6 & 14
30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

Rue de Bivre (pp. 8081) Fontaine Cuvier at the corner of rue Linn (pp. 8283) Intersection of rue Lhomond and rue Rataud (pp. 8485) The church of Saint-tienne-du-Mont (pp. 8687) Intersection of rue Laplace and rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevive (pp. 8889) Rue de la Bcherie (pp. 9091) Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre (pp. 9293) Rue Galande (pp. 9495) Cluny (pp. 9697) Jardin du muse de Cluny, rue de Sommerard (pp. 9899) Rue des Prtres-Saint-Sverin (pp. 100101) The Seine and Pont-Neuf (pp. 1023) 5 rue Hautefeuille, Htel de Fcamp (pp. 1045) Htel de la Salamandre, 20 rue de lHirondelle (pp. 1067) Cour de Rohan (pp. 1089) Former Saint-Cme Amphitheater, 5 rue de lcole-de-Mdecine (pp. 11011) Maison de Prince de Cond, 4 rue Monsieur-le-Prince (pp. 11213) Jardin du Luxembourg (pp. 11415) Jardin du Luxembourg (pp. 11617) Jardin du Luxembourg (pp. 11819) Saint-Sulpice Church, rue Saint-Sulpice (pp. 12021) Saint-Sulpice Church (pp. 12223) 2 rue de lAbbaye, at the intersection of rue Cardinal (pp. 12425) 38 rue de Seine (pp. 12627) Intersection of rue de Seine and rue de lchaud (pp. 12829) Place Denfort-Rochereau (pp. 13031) Cour de lhospice de la Maternit (pp. 13233)

VO IE

GE OR

GE SP

OM

PID

OU

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QU AI D
QU AI
RUE DE SEINE
NE UF

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PO NT DA RC OL E

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DE

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53 52
MA
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43 42
EN LI RE -JU UV ST A R. LE-P

CLU NY R. DE ST-SPRETRES EVER IN

DE RUE

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44

LPICE RUE SAINT-SU

40

36 37

RUE DE LA BUCHERIE

RU ED ER EN NE S

RUE GUYNEMER

47

48

49

JAC QU

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34

RU

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46 38

R. D E

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45

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51

50

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35 30
T ON DE SU LLY

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54

HIR RU ON E D DE E LL E

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41

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32
RU E UD TA RA

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RU
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33
IER UV EC RU

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RUE AUGUSTE COMT E

31

RU

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BOU LEV A ASPA RD R

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S LO

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55
U AVEN

GO BOULEVARD ARA

BO

UL

EV

AR

DS TJ AC Q

EN E

IA

RA

RUE

UE S

DA

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NU

EG

BOU

LEV

RU

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REILLE

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JOU

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56

MAIN E DU E

U AVEN E E REN COTY

Rue de Bivre, 1924

80

Rue de Bivre, 1998

81

Fontaine Cuvier at the corner of rue Linn, 1899

82

Fontaine Cuvier at the corner of rue Linn, 1998

83

Intersection of rue Lhomond and rue Rataud, 1913

84

Intersection of rue Lhomond and rue Rataud, 1997

85

The church of Saint-tienne-du-Mont, with the Panthon in the background, 1898

86

The church of Saint-tienne-du-Mont, with the Panthon in the background, 1997

87

Intersection of rue Laplace and rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevive, 1898

88

Intersection of rue Laplace and rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Genevive, 1998

89

Rue de la Bcherie, circa 1900

90

Rue de la Bcherie, 1998

91

Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, 1898

92

Rue Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, 1997

93

Rue Galande, 1899

94

Rue Galande, 1998

95

Cluny (door), 1902

96

Cluny (door), 1998

97

Jardin du muse de Cluny, rue de Sommerard, 1907

98

Jardin du muse de Cluny, rue de Sommerard, 1997

99

Rue des Prtres-Saint-Sverin, 1903

100

Rue des Prtres-Saint-Sverin, 1998

101

The Seine and Pont-Neuf, 190203

102

The Seine and Pont-Neuf, 1998

103

5 Rue Hautefeuille, Htel de Fcamp, 1898

104

5 Rue Hautefeuille, Htel de Fcamp, 1997

105

Htel de la Salamandre, 20 rue de lHirondelle, 1900

106

Htel de la Salamandre, 20 rue de lHirondelle, 1998

107

Cour de Rohan, 1915

108

Cour de Rohan, 1998

109

Former Saint-Cme Amphitheater, 5 rue de lcole-de-Mdecine, 1898

110

Former Saint-Cme Amphitheater, 5 rue de lcole-de-Mdecine, 1997

111

Maison de Prince de Cond, 4 rue Monsieur-le-Prince, 18991900

112

Maison de Prince de Cond, 4 rue Monsieur-le-Prince, 1998

113

Jardin du Luxembourg, 1906

114

Jardin du Luxembourg, 1998

115

Jardin du Luxembourg, 190203

116

Jardin du Luxembourg, 1998

117

Jardin du Luxembourg, 1906

118

Jardin du Luxembourg, 1997

119

Side door of Saint-Sulpice Church, rue Saint-Sulpice, 1907

120

Side door of Saint-Sulpice Church, rue Saint-Sulpice, 1998

121

Holy water font given to Franois I by the Republic of Venice, Saint-Sulpice Church, 1907

122

Holy water font given to Franois I by the Republic of Venice, Saint-Sulpice Church, 1998

123

2 rue de lAbbaye, at the intersection of rue Cardinal, 190708

124

2 rue de lAbbaye, at the intersection of rue Cardinal, 1997

125

Fry stand, 38 rue de Seine, 1910

126

38 rue de Seine, 1998

127

Intersection of rue de Seine and rue de lchaud, circa 1924

128

Intersection of rue de Seine and rue de lchaud, 1997

129

Advertising column, place Denfort-Rochereau, 1900

130

Advertising column, place Denfort-Rochereau, 1997

131

Cour de lhospice de la Maternit, 1899

132

Cour de lhospice de la Maternit, 1997

133

Arrondissements 18, 19 & 20

57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

Sacr-Coeur, seen from rue Norvins (pp. 13637) Le Moulin de la Galette, rue Lepic (pp. 13839) Place du Tertre (pp. 14041) Place du Tertre (pp. 14243) 47 rue des Cascades (pp. 14445)

BOULEVARD PERIPHERIQUE

BOULEVARD NEY
AVEN UE D E SAIN T-OU E N

K
NT

MO

ED AM

RUE CAULAINCOURT
RUE NO

RU

EC

US TIN

RU

PP

MAIN

GER

RU

IC

EAU

EC

EL

EP

ARR

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RU

PILO

58

R. C

60 59

57

RUE DE CLIG NANCOU

RVIN

RT

X DORMOY RUE DE MAR

AV E

ENE

RE

NU E

RUE

ORD

DE

RUE

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ARC

FL

RUE

RU

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TA

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NU AVE AV .D E SE C

EA EJ

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RE

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AVE DE SIM O

AN DR

NB OL I

ES

RUE

RUE DE BELLVILLE
DE
S AD E SC CA

R VA

RUE D ES OR TEAUX

RU

RUE

AVRO

RUE DE LAGNY COURS DE VIN

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BO UL EV AR D DE BE LL EV IL LE
RUE DE ME

61

NTIM

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RU

SO

RB

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CENNE S

Sacr-Coeur, seen from rue Norvins, 1922

136

Sacr-Coeur, seen from rue Norvins, 1997

137

Le Moulin de la Galette, rue Lepic, 1899

138

Le Moulin de la Galette, rue Lepic, 1997

139

Place du Tertre, 1899

140

Place du Tertre, 1998

141

Place du Tertre, 1899

142

Place du Tertre, 1998

143

47 rue des Cascades, 1901

144

47 rue des Cascades, 1997

145

Saint-Cloud, Versailles, Sceaux

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

Saint-Cloud (pp. 14849) Saint-Cloud (pp. 15051) Saint-Cloud (pp. 15253) Saint-Cloud (pp. 15455) Saint-Cloud (pp. 15657) Saint-Cloud (pp. 15859) Versailles (pp. 16061) Versailles (pp. 16263) Versailles (pp. 16465) Versailles (pp. 16667) Parc de Sceaux (pp. 16869) Parc de Sceaux (pp. 17071) Parc de Sceaux (pp. 17273) Parc de Sceaux (pp. 17475) Parc de Sceaux (pp. 17677)

62

63

64

65

66

67

Saint-Cloud Versailles
68 69 70 71 72

Sceaux
73 74 75 76

Saint-Cloud, 1924

148

Saint-Cloud, 1998

149

Saint-Cloud, 1922

150

Saint-Cloud, 1989

151

Saint-Cloud, end of August 1924

152

Saint-Cloud, December 1998

153

Saint-Cloud, end of August 1906

154

Saint-Cloud, July 1998

155

Saint-Cloud, 1923

156

Saint-Cloud, 1998

157

Saint-Cloud, 1906

158

Saint-Cloud, 1998

159

Versailles, 1901

160

Versailles, 1998

161

Park of Versailles, 1902

162

Park of Versailles, 1998

163

Versailles, statue of Cyparisse by Flamen, 1902

164

Versailles, statue of Cyparisse by Flamen, 1998

165

Versailles, escalier de lOrangerie, 103 steps, 20 meters high, July 1901

166

Versailles, escalier de lOrangerie, 103 steps, 20 meters high, July 1998

167

Parc de Sceaux, vase, April 1925, 7 a.m.

168

Parc de Sceaux, vase, 1998

169

Parc de Sceaux, April 1925

170

Parc de Sceaux, December 1998

171

Parc de Sceaux, March 1925, 7.30 a.m.

172

Parc de Sceaux, 1998

173

Parc de Sceaux, March 1925, 8 a.m.

174

Parc de Sceaux, 1998

175

Parc de Sceaux, June 1925, 7 a.m.

176

Parc de Sceaux, 1998

177

178

Paris Regained
Rosamond Bernier
Looking at these hauntingly evocative Atget images and the equally evocative latter-day certain musical sounds, I think of my days in Paris all over again. photographs by Christopher Rauschenberg that are like the sympathetic vibrations set off by I had lived in Paris during the 1950s and 1960s, always in the seventh arrondisse-

ment, and these photographs make me want to visit my old haunts again, not with a camera, but with a new lens, a pair of eyes: How much is it plus a change? How much is it a new look, not necessarily for the better?

was owned by a substantial bourgeois family of stinginess worthy of a Balzac novel. The

I lived for many years in a handsome eighteenth-century house on the rue du Bac that

S. family (principally old Madame S. and her son, Jean) occupied the grand first floors; an

impressive stone staircase led to their quarters. Our more modest top floors were reached by narrow, dimly lit stairs, and a small cage of an elevator. Through its open-work metal door sight of old Madame S. on her knees, scrubbing the Versailles parquet with a toothbrush. her son, had lost a hand in some undisclosed accident. He had not invested in a normal you could peer in at the other apartments as you creaked your way upward. One time I caught Another relation, Professor Daniel S., who lived on the floor above Madame S. and

prosthesis but had a metal hook, the kind worn by the pirate Captain Hook, which used to scare me as a child in the story of Peter Pan. One of the more disconcerting sights was his hook emerging from the elevator gate, pushing it to one side.

at best, Monsieur Jean would show up, tall and distinguished of aspect. He was too mean

When something went wrong with the heating in our apartment, which was minimal

to call in a professional and used to appear clad in what I thought of as his Do-It-Yourself suit, hopefully with some archaic device.

frayed and somewhat short at the wrist. Down on his knees he would go and tap the radiators In those days, the concierge occupied a dark cubbyhole at the left of the big entrance

door and would pull the cord to open the door that admitted you. No morethe reign of the you have to know the code and tap in the proper numbers on the panel at the buildings

concierge is over. No longer can you wander into a courtyard to admire the garden at the back street entrance. If you dont know the code and are expected for dinner, you will never make it. coming out of the house, so I could slip into the entrance hall. There were the names of the In Paris recently, I went by my old address on the rue du Bac. By luck, someone was

179

present occupants, all presumably younger members of the S. familyplus a change. There by the great bookseller/collector Pierre Brs. He died not long ago, and I recently read an

was one exception; the elegant little pavilion at the back of the courtyard used to be occupied account of the auction sale of his stupendous holdingsan original edition of Diderots encythe sale, which made record prices.

clopedia, rare illuminated manuscripts, magnificent bindings. It took several days to complete Before I moved to the rue du Bac, I lived at the Hotel Pont Royal, nearby on the rue

Montalambert. It was nondescript but convenient. I had a small room with a turkey-red carpet and an old-fashioned telephone on a cradle, which functioned only intermittently. Once, stairs and found her outside of her little cage, being measured for a dress by a friend. maddened by not getting any response from the hotel telephone operator, I stormed downThe Pont Royal was the temporary home for a number of people whom I knew. Fred,

the concierge, was an invaluable honorary assistant. Monsieur Mir is arriving tomorrow telephoned for you and left a message, he wants to know where Monsieur Skira is.

to work on his engravings with Monsieur Moulot, he might tell me, or Monsieur Matisse Downstairs was the bar, a convivial meeting place. The publishing house of Gallimard

was just down the street, so the hotel bar attracted a number of house authors and their friends. That is where I first met Albert Camus, Balthus, and the soon to be famous psychoanalyst, Dr. Jacques Lacan. Dr. Lacan lived and practiced at number 7 rue de Lille. Now, number 7 is photography, poetry, and architecture.

the locale of Karl Lagerfelds very chic new bookstore, specializing in his particular interests: On my recent trip to Paris I went to see the Hotel Pont Royal. Quelle horreur! as a

Nancy Mitford heroine might say. It was all tarted up in an unconvincing attempt at being

bohemian, with a display of irrelevant portrait photographs that included Oscar Wilde. And into a corner of the new shiny black-and-white lobby, with two or three bar stools.

my dear, dusky bar no longer existed at allinstead, it had been shrunk into a slither tucked At the other end of the rue du Bac was, and is, the Bon March, the oldest department

store in Paris, partly designed by Jean Eiffel. It had been the model for Emile Zolas Au

Bonheur des Dames. In my day, it was cluttered and fusty, the kind of place where Madame de Gaulle might and did do her shopping. It would never have occurred to me to go there. Now, the Bon March has a completely new life as one of the most stylish emporiums in town, and its extraordinarily abundant and recherch food department was recently eulogized in the New York Times. Other local shopping news is less rosy. Throughout what used to be my neighbor-

hood, the seventh and sixth arrondissements, the deliciously quirky Mom and Pop stores offering their specialties have been replaced. Now, there are deadeningly second-string

180

branches of well-known labels in a second-rate echo of the Faubourg Saint-Honor. There are endless shops offering undistinguished modern decoration. The legendary Saint-Germain des Prs cafs, the Flore and the Deux Magots, where

once Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir kept regular office hours and Alberto Giacometti of tourists would hang out there to pay $10 for a cup of coffee.

might drop by for one more very late night drink, have lost their character. Only the greenest However, the charcuteries, the patisseries, the fruits et legumes, and the prepared food

shops are as glorious and seductive as ever (and even more expensive). The wonderful

cheese shop Barthlmy on the rue de Grenelle, the Tiffany of cheese, still displays its chalkycrusted varieties like precious jewels. And when buying, you are asked with almost reverent concern: Is it for today or tonight? And at what time? The restaurants are, as a whole, as inspired and even more pricey than ever. Where

else but in Paris would there be a restaurant called Le Souffl that offers fifteen kinds of souffls along with an ample spoonful of the appropriate sauce to be ladled into its lofty crater? And where else but in Paris would a photographer be able to stand in the footprints

of his predecessor of one hundred years before and still see so many of the same buildings, the same facade decorations, the same street furniture?

181

In Atgets Shoes
Christopher Rauschenberg
As I traveled through Paris rephotographing Atgets images, I kept be also rich with the feeling of his work. I photographed hundreds seeing places that he had not photographed but that seemed to me to of those places where I felt Atgets spirit. I dont claim that Atget would have photographed those places. I was simply walking around Paris in Atgets shoes, and this is where they took me.

Courtyard, Village St. Paul, 21 rue St. Paul, 1997

183

Square de Vert-Galant, 1997

184

St. Gervais church, 1997

Jardin du Luxembourg garden, 1998

185

Rue Saint Etienne, 1997

Galerie Beaujolais, 1997

186

4 rue Scipion, 1997

187

Jardin du Luxembourg, 1997

188

83 rue du Faubourg Saint Antoine, 1997

24 rue de Sevigne, 1998

189

St. Cloud, 1998

190

St. Cloud, 1998

St. Cloud, 1998

191

St. Cloud, 1998

192