Colour brings old Paris back to life

When you think of Paris a century ago, the images that spring to mind are black and white or sepia. A stunning correction to this view has just been opened at the City Hall. They have put on display over 300 colour photographs and some ancient colour movie film of Paris, including dozens of extraordinary shots from la Belle Epoque before the first world war.

[Above: a humble family in the Rue du Pot de Fer, 24 June 1914 by Stéphane Passet]

These pictures, collected from attics and archives to celebrate the 1907 invention of colour photography, bring the old city alive in a way that is moving and somewhat spooky. You are struck by the vivid tones -- of facades and faces and clothes and gardens -- from a time that we imagine as dark and shabby. The colour reveals detail that is screened out by black-and-white. The bright lights of Pigalle, the young flower-sellers, the straw hats, red dresses and the ubiquitous advertising remind you that life in the early 20th century was not so different.

You notice how little Paris has changed. The French capital has almost been preserved intact compared with London or Berlin, which were transformed by world war two bombing, or American cities which have gone for constant renewal. Paris has made an effort, right down to keeping the old Métro entrances, street lights and traffic lights. The great squares such as the Concorde and Vendôme, look the same,  except for the sootier facades. You can see from a 1920s movie that our building on the Place de l'Opéra hasn't changed.

[Below: Dior's New Look,  Place Vendome 1948, by Robert Capa]

The big difference is the lack of traffic and then the explosion of motor vehicles in the 1930s and 1940s as the decades pass. Life was also visually much more elegant -- at least for those who could afford it. You wore a hat and a suit or dress to get about, not jeans and anoraks. 

One eye-opener is the colour series taken by mainly German-employed photographers during the world war two occupation. They show la joie de vivre de Paris with a sinister side to it. In one street scene, a woman pedestrian wears the yellow Star of David, imposed by the Nazis, to designate her as Jewish. 

Many of the later photographers are celebrities known for their black-and-white work in post-war Paris, including Robert Doisneau, Willy Ronis and Robert Capa. Viginie Chardin, who has staged the exhibition for Mayor Bertrand Delanoe, notes that most of these exponents of this "humanist" school saw monochrome as their art. Colour was what they did on order for magazines and advertising. Thanks to posters and countless books, the world thinks of Paris in this period in "a nostalgic key of black and white," while real life was really quite different, she says.

The show ends the the present day and the age of digital photography and Photoshop. None of it is as moving as those shots of the early 20th century.

[Below: le Passage du Caire, 18 July 1914, Georges Chevalier]

Comments

[me]

The press release you link to is somewhere on a hotmail account. And I can't find it online anywhere else. Where can we download it?
[Sorry, there's a glitch on the press release. It's not consultable on the internet, you have to ask them for it. I'll remove the link, which, as you point out, was via my hotmail account. There are quite a lot of the pictures on the www.paris.fr site. CB]

[The 3rd Column]

Beautiful post, Charles. Thank you.

[John]

Oh no, not that age-old cliché again: "how little Paris has changed" writes Charles Bremner. Frankly, why do you feel you have to propagate shallow clichés like that?

Arrondissements 1 to 11 as well as some bourgeois areas like the south of the 17th or the north of the 16th have little changed since WW1, but just open your eyes to the rest of the city for Christ's sake! The 15th, 14th, 13th, 12th, 20th, 19th, 18th have completely changed. And that's the largest part of central Paris. And what about the huge banlieue which has been completely transformed?

Actually for your information Charles Bremner there exist many books with pictures of the banlieue in 1900 and now to show the huge changes that took place in the urban area. You should check one of them. Oh, but I forgot, for you Paris is just the inner central-most part of Paris, the rest is just "some towns in the Île-de-France", so no wonder you think it has not changed. Why then do you call a riot in Villiers-le-Bel a "Paris riot"? Villiers-le-Bel is a great example of a bit of Greater Paris which has completely changed between 1900 and now.

For those who want to see how much Paris has changed in the course of the 20th century, particularly in the past 50 years, here's a picture of Paris taken in 1950:
http:// farm3.static.flickr.com/2253/1833275338_fcbc9652b7_b.jpg
And here is the exact same place in 2007:
http://img225.imageshack.us/img225/9012/phanw20perspectivetn0pw1.jpg

Montparnasse in 1900:
http://paris1900.lartnouveau.com/paris06/places/place_du_18_juin/cpa/pce15j3.htm
The exact same place today:
http://paris1900.lartnouveau.com/paris06/places/place_du_18_juin/actuel/pce_18a.htm

Another shot of Paris in 1930:
http:// img159.imageshack.us/img159/918/industrialparis1ca3.jpg
And the exact same place in 2007:
http:// img116.imageshack.us/img116/5831/issy2006up6.jpg

How little Paris has changed indeed!

[John]

Oh no, not that age-old cliché again: "how little Paris has changed" writes Charles Bremner. Frankly, why do you feel you have to propagate shallow clichés like that?

Arrondissements 1 to 11 as well as some bourgeois areas like the south of the 17th or the north of the 16th have little changed since WW1, but just open your eyes to the rest of the city for Christ's sake! The 15th, 14th, 13th, 12th, 20th, 19th, 18th have completely changed. And that's the largest part of central Paris. And what about the huge banlieue which has been completely transformed?

Actually for your information Charles Bremner there exist many books with pictures of the banlieue in 1900 and now to show the huge changes that took place in the urban area. You should check one of them. Oh, but I forgot, for you Paris is just the inner central-most part of Paris, the rest is just "some towns in the Île-de-France", so no wonder you think it has not changed. Why then do you call a riot in Villiers-le-Bel a "Paris riot"? Villiers-le-Bel is a great example of a bit of Greater Paris which has completely changed between 1900 and now.

For those who want to see how much Paris has changed in the course of the 20th century, particularly in the past 50 years, here's a picture of Paris taken in 1950 (copy and paste in your browser):
farm3.static.flickr.com/2253/1833275338_fcbc9652b7_b.jpg
And here is the exact same place in 2007 (I add to break the address on two lines):
img225.imageshack.us/img225/
9012/phanw20perspectivetn0pw1.jpg

Montparnasse in 1900:
paris1900.lartnouveau.com/paris06/
places/place_du_18_juin/cpa/pce15j3.htm
The exact same place today:
paris1900.lartnouveau.com/paris06/
places/place_du_18_juin/actuel/pce_18a.htm

Another shot of Paris in 1930:
img159.imageshack.us/img159/918/industrialparis1ca3.jpg
And the exact same place in 2007:
img116.imageshack.us/img116/5831/issy2006up6.jpg

How little Paris has changed indeed!

[Thank you for your observations, John. I'm glad you continue to contribute despite your frequent disagreement with my view of Paris. I suggest you go and have a look at the exhibition. CB]

[Jorg Andersen]

Old colour pictures are truly the best way of seeing the past. Paris is very lucky that the Germans didn't burn it down before they left, as Hitler ordered.

[Dominique]

"family in the Rue du Pot de Fer, 24 June 1914 by Stéphane Passet"

Hey! i recognize them! my grand grand mother who made it to Paris from her native Auvergne while her son (my grand father) was in the army for 7 years! (3 years of national service + 4 years in the trenches during WW1!)

Another world...i still have the medals though...Verdun in a box!

[Eric]

One of my favorite posts.
Thank you

[John Styx]

John, some parts of the banlieue have little changed either: Saint-Mandé, Vincennes, part of Saint-Ouen, Ivry, Malakoff, Montrouge, Issy and so on.

I'm also surprised you mention arrondissements has having "completely changed". What about the Butte-aux-Cailles and the area of Glacière (13th), Pernéty and Parc Montsouris (14th), Place de Clichy (18th) and Belleville-Ménilmontant (20th)? Half of the 15th (near La Motte-Piquet-Grenelle) is pretty much bourgeois.

[John]

@Jorg Andersen: Again, the central-most part of Paris wasn't destroyed during WWII, so people infer that Paris wasn't bombed and destroyed, but in other parts of Paris there were bombing and destruction. It's so annoying in the end that for some people only the bourgeois areas of the central-most part of Paris seems to be the true Paris. It's as if you dismissed the bombing of the London East End as not being a bombing of London just because it's not the bourgeois areas of the West End.

In Paris the working-class areas around Porte de la Chapelle and around Billancourt were completely destroyed by allied bombings due to the location of plants producing for the German war machine (Renault in Billancourt in particular). These allied bombings killed many people. In the night of April 21, 1944 alone, Allied bombers killed 641 people and injured 377 in the area around Porte de la Chapelle. Other areas in the suburbs were also bombed during the war.

@John Styx: The places you mention have changed a lot in the second half of the 20th century. The buildings at Glacière are more than two-third post-1950. In fact the 13th and the 19th are probably the arrondissements that have changed the most. Even the area around La Motte-Piquet-Grenelle that you mention has changed a lot. Look carefully next time you pass by. People have this tendency to blank from their eyes the new buildings, I don't know why. If you look carefully you'll notice that more than half of the buildings around La Motte Piquet are more recent than 1950 (essentially 1960s and 1970s). And as for Saint-Ouen, Ivry, Malakoff, Montrouge, Issy, the way they are today is as different from what they were in 1900 as Berlin today is different from what it was in 1900. Downtown Ivry in particular was completely rebuilt in Stalinist style by the Communist municipality after WWII. It's a must-see if you like East-Berlin architecture.

[John Styx]

John, I'm not so sure. I have a hobby of photographing statuary ornaments in Paris, so I can assure you I pay attention to buildings. Obviously, so do you. It seems we focus on different things, though.

Perhaps I'm focusing too much on finding older buildings (predating WW1, that is), but I'm always surprised when I walk in the banlieues by their contrasting against tower blocks and brand new office buildings. (Btw, I meant Vitry, not Ivry, my mistake). There are still some cités ouvrières in Paris: in the 13th, 15th and 20th arrondissements at least. There are also quite a lot of Art Nouveau buildings, including some very nice ones on Avenue d'Italie (13th), Rue Campagne-Première (14th) in the area of Rue Gambetta and Rue Belgrand (20th). "Le bon 15e", as they say, offers very nice 19th-century buildings around the Boulevard Pasteur and Rue de la Convention. I admit I seldom set foot in the 19th arrondissement.

On the other hand, I find the 5th, 6th and 7th arrondissements did change. Rue Guynemer and the area around the Censier University (rue Cuvier and rue Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire) come readily to the mind. As I live in the latter area, I'll try and find more 20th century monstrosities :-)

[John]

Here are a few pics showing Paris under the bombs during WWII.

Billancourt métro station after an Allied bombing raid (copy and paste the link in your browser):
www.amtuir.org/04_htu_metro_paris/cmp_1939_1949/images/
9606_1943_04_04_cmp_billancourt_9_ratp.jpg

Porte de La Chapelle area after the bombing raid of April 21, 1944 (the entire district was razed to the ground):
www.amtuir.org/04_htu_metro_paris/cmp_1939_1949/images/
10542_1944_04_22_cmp_pte_chapelle_entree_ratp.jpg

Saint-Ouen station after Allied bombing:
www.amtuir.org/04_htu_metro_paris/cmp_1939_1949/images/
10548_1944_04_22_cmp_ateliers_st_ouen_ratp.jpg

Underground factory set up by the Germans at Porte des Lilas métro station:
www.amtuir.org/04_htu_metro_paris/cmp_1939_1949/images/
11100_1945_cmp_pte_lilas_ateliers_ratp.jpg

American bombers bombing Sartrouville in the western suburbs in June 1944. More than 200 people died:
www.histoire-genealogie.com/local/cache-vignettes/
L425xH299/BOMBARDEMENT_SARTROUVILLE_22-bfc00.jpg

Athis-Mons in the southern suburbs was 80% destroyed in the bombing raid of April 18, 1944. 300 people died, 4,000 people lost their homes. Athis-Mons had to be rebuilt after the war:
www.mairie-athis-mons.fr/histoire/images/photo24.jpg

Even Versailles wasn't spared. This map shows bomb hits (the red dots) in Versailles during the bombing raid of June 24, 1944:
pagesperso-orange.fr/memoire78/images/vers002.jpg

More than 250 people were killed and 400 injured during that raid over Versailles. This is what the area around Versailles train station looked like after the raid:
pagesperso-orange.fr/memoire78/images/vers010.jpg

Another Versailles pic:
pagesperso-orange.fr/memoire78/images/vers008.jpg

Of course everything was rebuilt in its original style after the war, so you would never know if you visit Versailles today and you would assume that Versailles "has changed very little".

[David]

Hi John, Have just returned from the exhibition on foot of your recommendation. enjoyed it immensely. thanks.

[David]

Apologies. that post was addressed to Charles, not John. slip of the pen.

[Marguerite.]

J'ai vu cette exposition, moi aussi,elle est tres bien faite, tres interessante et tres emouvante.
Merci ,Monsieur Bremner, pour votre blog qui donne envie d'aller la voir a ceux qui ne l'ont pas encore vue.

JOHN, je ne comprends pas votre hargne anti-bourgeoise et miserabiliste.
Ces photos ont ete prises a une epoque ou les arrondissements comme le 13e, le 20e, le 15e n'etaient pas encore tres construits (la rue de la Convention n'a ete ouverte qu'a la fin du XIXe s.)et ou le 16e etait encore la campagne -il y a une photo d'un potager (surement deja bourgeois) a Auteuil-. Il est donc normal que ces photos nous montrent ce qu'on appelle maintenant "le vieux Paris" qui est le beau Paris...Et ce Paris-la n'a pas change, c'est etonnant.

Je suis d'accord avec vous pour dire que plusieurs constructions "modernes", dans Paris, sont affreuses et que ces suites de HLM dans les banlieues sont un spectacle desolant. Mais si C. Bremner n'en parle pas dans ce blog, c'est que ce n'est pas du tout le sujet.

Allez donc voir l'exposition ! C'est une suggestion de la vieille parisienne que je suis et qui aime cette ville meme sous ses aspects les plus difficiles. Vous serez certainement tres emu.

[John]

Marguerite, je crois que vous n'avez pas du tout compris le sens de mon message. Je voulais juste dire à Charles Bremner que cette idée que Paris a très peu changé depuis 1900 est complètement fausse. C'est un des grands clichés concernant Paris. En fait Paris est une ville qui change en permanence, tout autant que des villes comme Londres ou New York. Seuls les quartiers les plus centraux et les plus historiques changent peu, ce qui n'a rien d'étonnant, mais cela ne veut pas dire que Paris dans son ensemble ne change pas. C'est aussi stupide que de dire que New York ne change pas sous prétexte que rien ne change à Greenwich Village.

Il y a une tendance dans la presse étrangère et chez les touristes étrangers à regarder Paris comme une ville jamais sortie des années 1930 (le dessin animé Ratatouille est typique de cela), comme une ville tout juste bonne à être un musée alors que Londres ou Amsterdam seraient les villes dynamiques. Il est vraiment temps de briser les clichés.

Et je ne voulais pas du tout dire que les constructions récentes sont des monstruosités. Pas du tout. On a construit des choses moches, mais on a aussi construit de belles choses (Pyramide du Louvre, Maison du monde arabe, tours Société Générale, beaucoup d’architecture audacieuse en banlieue.), et certains projets à venir promettent d'être superbes comme la nouvelle Philharmonie de Paris à La Villette conçue par Jean Nouvel, ou la nouvelle tour Axa en construction à La Défense qui sera plus haute que la tour Montparnasse.

Paris est une ville qui bouge et qui évolue en permanence, comme toutes les très grandes métropoles mondiales. Il est temps de sortir du coeur historique et d'élargir le regard ! Voila quel était le sens de mon message.

Pour une idée de la richesse et de la variété architecturale incroyable de l'agglomération parisienne, je vous conseille vivement le site suivant qui nous change beaucoup des clichés de la ville-musée:
http://derouault.net/-Urbanisme-

[Ros]

Wonderful blog, Charles, really one of the best & am keeping it. I don't live far from the rue du Pot de Fer - would you by any chance know the number where the photo was taken?

['fraid not, Ros. I'll look at the catalogue later today and see if it's mentioned. CB]

[LondonGirlinManchester]

Thank you both Charles & John. I found both the article and your comments most enlightening. I only wish I were in Paris at the moment so I could see the exhibition!
John - I love that Urbanisme website. The photos are wonderful and have shown me several new views of Paris which I have not noticed on my previous trips. I will take my time looking through it and on my next trip I will definitely make more effort to notice ALL of the architecture around me.
Thank you

Speaking of Amsterdam.

Stories exist about this city just like about Paris - the old buildings, the canals, and so on. But the top was however when I visited Volendam, a small town two steps north of Amsterdam at "seaside" (it's not a real sea actually, but rather a huge lake, or a portion of sea surrounded by land, dams and other barrages.
Anyway.
So we travelled by boat to the Marken island, and saw the most authentic traditional Dutch village.
There were traditionally dressed dutch kids playing in front of traditional little wooden houses, and traditional peasants (wearing wooden shoes, of course) walking about their business.

Only to find out the region had been bombed to the ground during WW2 and the authorities had later gathered the rests of several villages to built all this "as it was before" - walls, cows, and people altogether!
Paris may have changed little, but we're yet to see little Amélie Poulain hanging around in Montmartre - and even less actual knights battling on Louvre's roof! :)

[Brooke01]

To CB: from a regular reader of your blog, I wondered if there was any chance of some comment on the article in Time recently about the cultural decline of France? I'm sure everyone would be interested to hear your views and analysis.

[Yes, I was planning to mention the Time article. I didn't leap on it because it's such a hoary old chestnut. American and British publications have been pronouncing regularly on the death of French culture since, well... about 1789. CB]

[peter kinsley www.peterkinsley.com]

One of the wonders of France for the visitor is how they have managed to preserve it. At the risk of opprobrium for quoting my book*** "...the site of the Chateau where a plaque proclaimed that Julius Caesar once lived there and had made it into his "Fortress". No sign of his presence or that of the Celts who founded the place five hundred years before the birth of the other J.C. remained, however, for Richelieu had 'razed it to the ground', as the saying goes, in 1633. That was just seventeen years before old Moliere himself came on the scene and took lodgings in the house of the local barber Monsieur Gely, until 1657 when Paris beckoned. What a strange friendship that must have been, the famous playwright and the local barber. Did Moliere get all the local gossip from Gely to put in his plays? He certainly didn't chum up with him for a free haircut.** The barber's house, now the Syndicat d'Initiative is opposite the Hotel de Ville in the cobbled Place Gambetta. It is in this square that the film makers shoot their 16th, 17th and 18th century films, for there is no need to build a set.
The unchanging face of France remains as it was built in 1552, and the Syndicat have wisely restored and preserved old shop signs: BIBLIOTHEQUE and VINS ET CHARBON.
*** The Valley of the Butterflies
** A reference to the shoulder-length curly hair -- hippy style - on the Moliere bust in Pezenas.

[John]

Talking of the Paris that supposedly has changed very little, here are some pics that were sent to me (copy and paste the links in your browser):

Rue de Rennes in the historical heart of Paris in 1900 and today (photos taken from the exact same place):
img177.imageshack.us/img177/2363/paris5et1.jpg

Pictures of Belleville (20th arrondissement) in 1950 and today (photos taken from the exact same place):
img90.imageshack.us/img90/8480/paris4qk1.jpg

Le Louvre courtyard in 1950:
img511.imageshack.us/img511/1904/paris1bi2.jpg
Le Louvre courtyard today (note the skyscrapers that have grown in the distance):
img511.imageshack.us/img511/2431/parisup7.jpg

Place des Fêtes (19th arrondissement) in 1950:
img527.imageshack.us/img527/7349/belleville2re3.jpg
Place des Fêtes today:
img519.imageshack.us/img519/2113/bellevillent8.jpg

Moulin de la Galette in Montmartre in 1930:
img142.imageshack.us/img142/5144/paris2zy4.jpg
The same place today (that's where you realize that what looks old in Paris is not necessarily old; the lamppost to the left is a fake late 20th century addition, and the moulin complex is also a fake post-WWII construction, not to mention that the medieval looking houses behind the moulin also look like they were built after the 1930 picture):
img142.imageshack.us/img142/2150/paris3pv1.jpg

[Lily]

Charles thanks for this nice post. On the www.paris.fr site one can see the red lipstick on the Dior dog mistress better. – Are visitors flocking to the exhibition in the same way as to last year’s Doisneau exhibition at the Hôtel de Ville? Well, I guess most regular Times’ readers don’t mind a two plus hours’ wait to get in. :)-

John thanks for the interesting complementary elements on Paris urbanism. It is always nice to first watch the ‘before’, close ones eyes and imagine how the scene could have changed – and then look at reality.

John, Paris has changed for sure but I think most foreigners point so much to the parts of Paris that haven’t changed because we like it that way. To have so much old stone in the heart of a European metropolis that has not seen destruction simply is exceptional and fascinating. Regardless of the proportion of new architecture surrounding it or of how much the old embedded in the new has changed its aspect: Paris’ charm lies in the old.

Whoever criticizes Paris as the ‘ville des musées’ will likely refer to the fact that the old preserved inner city has become too expensive for ordinary residents, esp. families. There is a nice book of drawings by Sempé , “Un peu de Paris”, where he depicts the social change that has affected Paris. You will likewise find much of it (lonely elderly people, streets packed with cars, empty playgrounds, lack of sunshine, etc.) in many other big cities.

[Albert]

John -- it's true that Paris has changed, but only in relatively small ways. The expert town planners nearly always ensure that new schemes fit in with the overall scheme. Come to London to see what real change does to a city.