Column Of The Place Vendôme, Ruins Of The Paris Commune Paul Loubere C.1871

Vintage albumen print signed and captioned in the plate, mounted on cardboard. Column of the Place Vendôme, Ruins of the Paris Commune by Paul LOUBERE (active 1860-1890). The obelisk, erected in 1810 which bears the statue of the Emperor Napoleon I, is on the ground. The composition of the image centered on the fall of the column symbolizes the fight of the Communards. We can see the cart, characters and "ghosts" due to the exposure time on the square in the background. During the bloody week of the Commune (May 21 to 28, 1871) many public buildings were burned down. For the first time a major event in the history of France was covered by photographers who took to the streets to capture the great moments of the Paris Commune. Photography made it possible to preserve the reality of these moments, traces of which would quickly be erased by the nascent Third Republic. The ruins were a beautiful subject for these photographers. Paris devastated recalls the beauty of ancient ruins: we photograph the charred walls of the palaces of the Empire as we photograph the archaeological remains of Rome, Naples or Athens.
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