Parisian views

by Shelley Rice

During the Second Empire (1852-1870), Baron Haussmann and Emperor Napoleon III reconstructed Paris into the "City of Light" we know today. The government and other public institutions commissioned many photographers - among them Charles Marville, Henri Le Secq, Edouard-Denis Baldus, and Gustave Le Gray - to record the old Parisian architecture and to document the demolition and reconstruction. In Parisian Views, Shelley Rice explores not only the literal connections between photography and the transformation of Paris but also the metaphorical ones. Each of the book's essays is in itself a "Parisian view." The fragmented, layered quality of the text allows the author to avoid making a linear narrative out of a subject that is enriched by multiple perspectives. Yet all of the essays revolve around a central theme: the creation of modern urban space, in both two and three dimensions, and the impact of this space on the lives of those who walked the streets of Paris of the nineteenth centu