Marville

On my tutor's suggestion I read a chapter titled "Marville" in Graham Robb's book entitled Parisians.

I very much enjoyed reading the chapter and as my tutor indicated it did give a very good insight into how early photography was used as a recording medium.

Marville was a french landscape and architecture photographer who was especially well known for taking pictures of ancient Parisian scenes before they were destroyed and the city was rebuilt under Baron Haussmann's new plan for the modernisation of Paris. A decade later Marville also took photographs of the new roads.

I thought the comparison the author made of Marville's photograph of Place-Saint-Andre-des-Art in 1865 with the one taken thirty three years later was interesting. As the author says "so much information is contained in that split-second burst of photons". It is fascinating that a photograph of that nature can reveal so much. A lot of information can especially be deduced from the different advertisements show in the photographs at the time.

I also found Robb's description of Marville's early experience of being a photographer and his meticulous printing and probable delight at the process evocative.