Gezicht op de Boulevard de la Madeleine 1890 - 1898

Curator: This is “Gezicht op de Boulevard de la Madeleine,” a photograph taken sometime between 1890 and 1898. It is the work of Édouard Hautecoeur. Editor: There’s a beautiful quietness to this photograph despite the implied bustle of a busy street. I see carriages and people, but it feels remarkably still. It has a hazy aesthetic to it. Curator: Absolutely. The albumen print lends a soft, almost dreamlike quality, typical of the pictorialist movement, blurring the lines between photography and painting. Look closely and you can see the influence of Japonisme. This aesthetic certainly mirrors how Westerners selectively imbibed the stylistic traditions of Japanese art to produce the “modern.” Editor: That soft focus and the city bustle is contrasted by the building on the left – what is that, some kind of temple? The image composition is clever: with the camera viewing from a high vantage point, we are given insight into all the many inequalities embedded into modern life – who has access to what mode of transport for example, or whose place in society demands that they carry out a task on foot. Curator: That building is indeed evocative of a temple; you are probably seeing the Église de la Madeleine in the distance there on the left. In photographs, a temple façade serves a slightly different function compared to a painted backdrop. The monument itself already has inherent cultural significance, layered histories of power, class, and even religious struggle. Placing it in an image thus amplifies those symbolisms. Editor: Do you think the monument acts as an implied reference to secularization, the shifting seat of power as religion gave way to the rise of city institutions? In photographs, public spaces always represent accessibility and privilege; the boulevard would have represented many things to many different people depending on their own position in the city’s ecology. Curator: Precisely. By framing the photograph in this manner, Hautecoeur has effectively turned the city itself into a stage—and a testament to these very complex issues. It makes one contemplate the relationship between architectural authority and civilian agency within the burgeoning modern cityscape. Editor: It is indeed an insightful visual archive. This has really enriched my appreciation of its nuances; there's more happening here than simply a cityscape. Curator: Agreed. Recognizing those encoded symbolic and sociological interactions transforms our engagement with images, especially with something as ubiquitous as cityscapes.