Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris

All images by Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879). Hôtel de la Marine, 1864-1870. Albumen print from collodian negative. National Gallery of Art, Washington.

The first major retrospective exhibition in the United States on the 19th-century photographer Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879) shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, featuring some 100 photographs covering the full trajectory of his photographic career. Marville spent many years in Paris documenting the city as it underwent renovation and development. Originally an illustrator of books and magazines, he took up photography in 1850--primarily as a landscape and architecture photographer.

Rue de Constantine (fourth arrondissement), 1866. Albumen print from collodian negative. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Flèche de Notre Dame, Viollet-le-Duc, Ar (Spire of Notre Dame, Viollet-le-Duc, Ar[chitect]), 1859-1860. Albumen print from collodian negative. The AIA/AFF Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

Marville used the recently introduced collodion (glass) negative process. Its short exposure time yielded more clear, precise images than the earlier paper negative process which created a softer view. Before documenting Paris, he photographed Gothic cathedrals--Chartres, Reims, Notre Dame--with an eye to architectural detail and the play of light against three-dimensional surfaces. "Almost immediately he made visually rich images where you can tell the difference between the sidewalk and the façade of the building and the difference between ironwork and glass," says Jeff Rosenheim, curator of Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris. "The paper negative blended those things, but the glass negative defined those differences. For someone interested in the changing shape of the city, that glass negative transformed the potential of the description of photography."

Rue de la Bûcherie, from the cul de sac Saint-Ambroise (fifth arrondissement), 1866-1868. Albumen print from collodian negative. National Gallery of Art, Washington.

From 1862, as official photographer for the city of Paris, he documented aspects of the modernization program launched by Emperor Napoleon III and his urban planner, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Marville photographed the city's oldest quarters and the narrow, winding streets slated for demolition. The photos were for the purposes of the city's archives and documented the disappearance of old Paris and the new city emerging. The campaign restored monuments, created wide boulevards and installed public works and amenities.

His best known work is his Old Paris album--425 photographs from the mid-1860s of the premodern city. Although not all the planned demolitions were executed, in many cases these photographs remain the only records of streets and neighborhoods that had been part of the city for centuries.

Self-Portrait at a Window, February 20, 1851. Salted paper print from paper negative. Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

A self-portrait made in his studio on the rue St. Dominique in the early 1850s.

Interior of Les Halles Centrales, 1874. Albumen print from collodian negative. The AIA/AFF Collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

He photographed new buildings as well. The Les Halles marketplace was one of Napoleon III's projects, a modern "umbrella of iron" built in the 1850s. The destruction of Les Halles and the area around Montparnasse during the 1970s was part of another recreation of the city.

Arts et Métiers (Ancien Modèle), 1864. Albumen print from collodian negative. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Architect Gabriel Davioud, one of Haussmann's chief collaborators, was responsible for the design of the "street furniture" that appeared throughout the city starting in the 1860s--kiosks, lampposts, poster columns, benches, decorative ironwork grilles, fountains, garden gates--meant to embellish the city and improve its functionality. Davioud selected Marville to document the design and placement of many of these amenities, including a series recording each of the ninety-six prototypes for the more than twenty thousand new lamps. These photographs were intended to celebrate the city's great advancement in public works.

Rue Saint-Jacques (fifth arrondissement), 1865-1866. Albumen print from collodian negative. National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Passage Saint-Guillaume toward the rue Richilieu (first arrondissement), 1863-1865. Albumen silver print from glass negative.

An invaluable record of a city's urbanization on view through May 4, 1000 Fifth Ave.