Gezicht op Avenue de l'Opéra 1890 - 1898

Curator: Just look at this – "Gezicht op Avenue de l'Opéra," taken somewhere between 1890 and 1898. An anonymous photographer captures the hustle and bustle, or what passes for it then. Editor: It's incredibly romantic! All sepia-toned and a little fuzzy, like a half-remembered dream. It makes me feel like I'm stepping back into time, strolling down a Parisian boulevard in my Sunday best. A little melancholic, perhaps? Curator: That romantic feeling is precisely what these kinds of photographs sold, I think. The burgeoning middle class yearned for access to Parisian life, and imagery like this served both as an ideal and an aspiration. But it is worth noting how carefully composed the photograph is to avoid certain, perhaps less appealing, social realities of the time. Editor: True, it’s idealized, I suppose. Although the way the light dapples the facades feels so utterly authentic. Did they do that on purpose? Like the soft-focus thing movies used to do to make actresses glow? Curator: Light was certainly a major consideration in street photography from this era. Exposure times were long so getting a good photograph involved a lot of preparation. The photographer probably returned to the same location many times to get it perfect. Editor: So, posed and perfect! Though the sheer mass of detail sucks you in, the tiny figures scurrying about, the elaborate window displays, even the architecture stretching back and back…It’s lovely, nonetheless. A carefully fabricated window to another era. Curator: It also brings to mind the relationship between Paris, photography, and modern identity in general at that time. In a rapidly changing world, people turned to photographs to remember their place, as both citizens of cities and consumers. In its careful choreography of figures and vehicles, the photograph itself performs a sort of social ordering. Editor: I suppose the realness is, and always has been, a game of smoke and mirrors. Still, stepping away for a minute, I love getting lost in that romantic haze, those ghosts of fashion. Curator: Photography will always be stuck in that binary – as an index and document but, simultaneously, an ideal to be pursued, not simply recorded. Editor: Well, whether perfectly posed or a lucky accident, it is a gem of a peek, isn’t it?