Égouts De Paris 1861

This photograph, Égouts De Paris, was captured by Felix Nadar at an unknown date, and shows the Paris sewer system. The image testifies to the ingenuity of industrial materials. Cast iron and brick form the very infrastructure, engineered to manage waste on a massive scale. Nadar’s photograph draws attention to the material infrastructure that supports modern life, made possible by the labor of countless unseen workers, like the solitary figure in the background. The photograph aestheticizes these everyday materials of labor, which are so easily overlooked. These are not traditional art materials. Instead, they are the industrial building blocks of the modern city itself. Nadar, by bringing his camera into this subterranean world, asks us to consider how these spaces and their hidden workforce are vital to the city's functioning, and how their own labor and working conditions reflect wider social issues of labor, politics, and consumption.