[Street Scene, Building Under Construction]

Hippolyte Bayard arrived in Paris by early 1825 in the company of his childhood friend Edmond Geffroy. Like many others during the Bourbon Restoration (1814-1830), they left the provinces in search of opportunities in the capital. Geffroy came in pursuit of a career as an actor. While Bayard may have harbored artistic aspirations of his own, he soon went to work at the Ministry of Finance.

By early 1839, Bayard had begun experimenting with light-sensitive chemicals in search of ways to fix an image from nature on paper. He immersed himself in this nascent technology/art form that was soon to be called “photography,” all the while maintaining his job as a bureaucrat.

As the population of Paris continued to grow through the 1830s under King Louis-Philippe, Paris extended its reach beyond the city walls to places like Batignolles-Monceau and Montmartre, resulting in numerous building projects. Many Parisian civil servants, such as Bayard, and eventually other artists as well, gravitated toward these more affordable areas. Over the next decade, Bayard documented the transformation of his adopted city with his camera. He made numerous images in his own neighborhood of Batignolles-Monceau. In many cases he chose to turn his camera on the quotidian scenes of relatively humble buildings undergoing repair or renovation.  (See also: 84.XO.968.82).

Bayard took this image from a vantage point above street level (probably from a second floor window across the street) so that he could include several floors of the construction, the cobblestoned street, and the building next door. His framing of this composition sets it apart from conventional painted and engraved views of Paris of the period. Rather than positioning himself in front of the building to capture the façade in elevation, he chose a vantage point at the far left that creates a dramatic diagonal from top left to bottom right. Bayard made at least one other photograph of this building in the midst of repair from a closer perspective, though that image does not include the two construction workers in the bottom right (See: 84.XO.968.89).

Carolyn Peter, J. Paul Getty Museum, Department of Photographs
2019

For more information about Bayard’s interest in the changing Parisian landscape see:Nancy Keeler, “Hippolyte Bayard aux origines de la photographie et de la ville moderne,” La Recherche Photographique, no. 2 (May 1987): 6-17.