May the 11th, at Musée Carnavalet

May 11^th: Musée Carnavalet

 Musée Carnavalet

Today we went to the Musée Carnavalet and spoke with Françoise Reynaud, the Curator. The Carnavalet is noted to be one of Paris’ most genuinely Parisian museums. What was originally a historic museum the current building was purchased and predominantly rebuilt in 1866. During this time, the assembled collections were stored in the Paris City Hall of the time. This sadly turned into a disaster when the collection, including many records was mostly lost to a fire. In 1874 the library to the collection opened, and the museum shortly followed in 1880. After multiple rebuilds and additions throughout the next hundred years, we have the Carnavalet as it stands now.  The museum prides itself on being not only a history museum, one with objects, archeological insight and a wealth of research, but also as an art gallery, frequently showcasing the large collection of original art.

The photography collection within the museum stands at close to 150,000 works, from the beginning of photographic history to today.  Much of it began as a history of Paris, not a history of photography.  One of the main collections was titled Topographie, which included neighborhood landmarks. The Portraits collection features photographs of famous people, or photographs taken by famous people, and the Merce collection features the professions, clothes and everyday life of Parisians. Prior to the creation of a specific photographic department at the Museum in 1980, the content of the photographs was more important than the creator; they were documents.

Once the department was created with Reynaud’s leadership, many photographs inside these collections were removed and re-catalogued. The creator of the photograph now played a role, as well as the type. Many famous names were coming up as creators of the work, among them, Atget, Le Secq, Marville, Nadar and Talbot, to name but a few. This process also allowed for a new wave of conservation efforts to occur, since the photographs being pulled could be newly assessed for damage and deterioration. Since this initial movement of cataloguing occurred, the collection had become a bit full, and research into off-site space is becoming necessary. 

The class, with Françoise Reynaud, looking at some amazing photographs.

Out come the white gloves and some expressions of wonder and glee. Reynaud and her colleagues pulled some amazing things for us to view. One of the first things was a Daguerreotype from the 1848 revolution. Featuring an image of some of the barricades on the east side of Paris. This exact image was later used to make a gravure for the paper L’Illustration. Not only was this piece in fantastic condition, but also the image itself is an amazing piece of history. Reynaud informed us that the street in the image no longer exists thanks to Haussmanization. This image is something really interesting in a purely theoretical sense, since by its very nature, a daguerreotype is meant to be a singular image. They cannot be reproduced; they are individual, unique things. So, to then have the image content widely reproduced in a newspaper, it gives that image a completely different perspective, I think, anyways. It also gave me my first attempt at photographing daguerreotypes in the rough, as can be seen by my awful attempt at recording it. Now I know why Mike wear’s black all the time. I am indebted to my classmates with black notebooks for what little of the image you can see. 

An example of bad photography on my part.

A point of pride arrived upon the arrival of a Charles Négre print, titled Ramoneurs en Marche. This is a print we have seen time and time again throughout our studies, but to see it in person is something else. Reynaud informed us out of the two, known prints in existence of this image, the Musée has one, which is an albumen print, dated roughly to before May 1852. The other, and this is the point of pride, is at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Ottawa’s has an extra detail in that it’s a salt paper print, not albumen, dated December 1851. The image itself is a great, historical example of a photographer using a painterly eye to create a study of motion of walking chimney sweep boys. The Ottawa copy is also signed by Négre, something that the museum’s website hints at saying that Négre believed it was a finished work of art. Either way, I think it’s really cool that we as Canadians have the only other known copy of this photograph. Not sure how we managed to get it, but it’s still awesome.

Françoise Reynaud and Marta Braun with Négre's "Ramoneurs en Marche."

An Atget Bathroom.

Reynaud went on to show a variety of images from Négre, Le Secq, Martins, Baldus, Atget, Brassai, Ronis and Ian Paterson, a Canadian photographer that the Musée had just begun collecting images from. I found some of the Atget photographs the most entertaining, for a fairly juvenile reason. Reynaud was kind enough to show a series of Atget’s photographs of ‘public conveniences,’ as my English relatives call them. As we know, Atget photographed many, many things, places and themes throughout Paris; this was one that is not only funny, but a showcase in design as well. You can see the differences between the male public and female public toilets of the day, made even more different when thinking about the somewhat motorized ones that currently dot the city. The toilets of times gone by seemed so much nicer, even the simple ones when compared to what we have now. On a side note, handily, most to all of Atget’s photographs are labeled in some way, since they were inventoried upon direct purchase from him at the time. Some of the mounts were original to the photographs as well, some including inscriptions of dates, locations and captions.

 Atget's original captions to one of his photographs.

A Brassai photograph.

A very small Ian Paterson pinhole photograph.

This first, official class visit for this course was amazing.  We were shown a wide variety of works spanning the history of Photography and the city of Paris. Renaud’s enthusiasm and passion allowed the Musée to have a flourishing photographic department that not only honours the photographers and their place in history, but also continues to highlight the content of the photograph, keeping the history of Paris at the forefront of the collection.

All Photography by A Cook.