Aux Coins Des Rues

Abstract

It seems impossible to me that one could have a completely ordinary temperament if one had been raised along the quais of Paris, across from the Louvre and the Tuileries, close to the Palais Mazarin, and facing the glorious river Seine that flows between the towers large and small and the spires of old Paris. There, from the rue Guénégaud to the rue du Bac, bookstores, antique shops, and print-sellers spread out a lavish display of the most beautiful forms of art and the most surprising tokens of the past. Every storefront, in its peculiar charm and amusing disorder, is a seduction for the eyes and mind. The passer-by who knows how to see always takes away from them some idea, like a bird flying away with a bit of straw for its nest. Because there are trees along with books, and women walking by, it is the most beautiful spot in the world. Anatole France, Le Livre de mon ami (1885) In both kinds of streets one should exercise special care to keep the lowest part of the gutters clear, so that waters from rain and household use, as well as from washing the roadway, will flow easily into the sewer. Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, Mémoires (1893) But as man withdraws from the photographic image, the exhibition value for the first time shows its superiority to the ritual value. To have pinpointed this new stage constitutes the incomparable significance of Atget, who, around 1900, took photographs of deserted Paris streets. It has quite justly been said of him that he photographed them like scenes of crime. The scene of a crime, too, is deserted: it is photographed for the purpose of establishing evidence. Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) Their story begins on ground level, with footsteps. They are myriad, but do not compose a series. They cannot be counted because each unit has a qualitative character: a style of tactile apprehension and kinesthetic appropriation. Their swarming mass is an innumerable collection of singularities. Their intertwined paths give shape to spaces. They weave places together. In that respect, pedestrian movements form one of these “real systems whose existence in fact makes up the city” (Charles Alexander). They are not localized, it is rather they that spatialize. Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (1984)