c. 1865

Rue Descartes vers l'École Polytechnique

Charles Marville

French, 1816 - 1879

This photograph shows a street view in Paris’s Latin Quarter that was slated for demolition as part of an extensive public works project. Municipal bureaucrats commissioned pictures for planning purposes and to chronicle the spaces for posterity.

Marville often produced multiple images of the same street from different perspectives. Here he captured one view of the Rue Descartes. The plunging depth of field draws us into a place on the eve of its destruction.