902
in London) is a mélange of wooded landscapes similar to
photographs made by Marville and others at places like
Fontainebleau Forest, other views of a coiffed yet im-
mature landscape, and records of the new built elements
in the park. Marville’s confrontation with this strange,
modern space seems to have pushed his thinking about
photography: wooded landscapes recede from his work,
and urban topography becomes a central subject for the
next twenty years. Moreover, his adeptness at organizing
many details within the picture frame—evident in his
calotypes (see for instance his series of the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts and his Louvre interiors)—was broadened
as he modifi ed old landscape conventions which applied
neither to photography nor to the new green spaces of
Haussmann’s Paris.
The change in Marville’s subject matter certainly
owed most to his continuing relationship with the city
administration. The Service des Promenades et Plan-
tations (which emerged from the Bois de Boulogne
project) employed him to document the urban furniture
of the new boulevards as well as the parks and squares
which proliferated around the city. Around 1865 Mar-
ville received another commission, from the newly
formed Service des Travaux historiques: a series of more
than four hundred views of streets slated for demolition.
In these repetitive views Marville’s approach to photog-
raphy, and to modern Paris, is remarkably expressed.
Buildings frame and structure every view, producing
stable—though not precisely symmetrical—composi-
tions; vantage points are calculated to maximize length
of perspective and the number of elements in the frame;
views are often taken at a crossroads. Time and again
the result is deep perspective, a multiplicity of options
for the roaming eye, and a maximum of information.
In 1877, the Service des Travaux historiques again ap-
proached Marville, for a series of one hundred views
recording the wide boulevards which replaced the ear-
lier streets. These, along with many of his records of
street furniture, were exhibited at the 1878 Exposition
Universelle in Paris. Throughout these years Marville
continued to take a variety of freelance assignments,
most often working with architects and builders to re-
cord their projects. He also retained the negatives from
all his work for the city.
Marville seems to have remained aloof from the
journals and societies which comprised the Parisian
photography scene, and he received little notice in his
lifetime. When he is mentioned, the high quality of his
work is emphasized. Notably, Nadar refers to Marville’s
“remarkable” collections in the city archives. Reception
of Marville was also muted in the twentieth century, in
part because his long professional career and low profi le
did not accommodate critical preoccupations with calo-
type photography and amateur aims. However, given
Marville’s position as a predecessor to Eugène Atget, who
presumably knew the earlier photographer’s work well,
and perhaps modelled his own quite different project on
it, Marville’s continued relative obscurity in photographic
literature is surprising. For instance, the many researchers
who might have embraced Marville’s urban records in theMARVILLE, CHARLES
Marville, Charles. Rue de
Constantine, Paris.
The Metropolitan Museum of
Art, Purchase, The Horace W.
Goldsmith Foundation Gift,
1986 (1986.1141) Image ©
The Metropolitan Museum
of Art.