Paris Under Snow, Viewed from the Tower of Saint-Gervais 1890

Editor: Auguste-Louis Lepère’s “Paris Under Snow, Viewed from the Tower of Saint-Gervais," an etching and engraving from 1890, offers a stunning, panoramic perspective of Paris. I'm struck by how the artist uses the rooftops to create such a powerful foreground. What visual cues draw your attention when you view this piece? Curator: The dominance of those snow-covered rooftops certainly anchors our gaze, doesn't it? They become almost like ancestral memories, evoking a sense of communal life huddling against the cold. The cityscape, dominated by the spire of Notre Dame, tells a layered story. Note how the artist positions the religious icon as an emblem, contrasting with the secular rooftops that seemingly reach towards it, but are literally, at the ground level. What do you think that might represent? Editor: Maybe the rooftops show a grounded reality and how even though this big, beautiful church looms over, it doesn't change what the average person experiences in their daily life. What’s the impact of using black and white versus color? Curator: Exactly! The choice of monochrome underscores a starkness and austerity. Snow, symbolically linked to purification and beginning again, blankets everything. Black and white gives it a feel of document, memory, the kind of truth a photograph might possess. This stylistic choice creates a link between the tangible, touchable world of Paris, and our abstract concepts of that space. The city transforms into a shared dream-scape, covered in symbolic whiteness. Editor: I see it now, all these layers of symbolism I originally overlooked. Curator: Precisely. It is through unpacking these visual cues, through interpreting what appears familiar in new ways, that the image really speaks.