Avenue De L’Observatoire: Organization in a Foggy Paris
Public Deposited- Creator
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Wilder, Laura
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Center for European Studies
- Abstract
- Late one Winter night, a Parisian drives along the Avenue de L’Observatoire. They are forced to continue down the avenue slowly because even their headlights are not powerful enough to reveal a clear path through the fog. Neither the street lamps or the trees can pierce this fog as it adds a film to every rough edge it touches, dulling each and every end point of objects within its reach. In Brassaï’s 1934 gelatin silver print entitled Avenue De L’Observatoire, Brassaï captures this moment in time. By utilizing the infamous Parisian fog, Brassaï created a work of art that both plays with the viewer’s eye and emphasizes the idealization of lines, segmentation, and organization put in place by Georges-Eugène Haussmann during an era of destruction and modernization. Brassaï reveals the relationship between the green space’s sturdy Haussmannian elements and the fog, all the while encouraging the viewer to question traditional assumptions about Paris.
- Date of publication
- 2020
- Keyword
- DOI
- Resource type
- Article
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Journal title
- North Carolina Journal of European Studies
- Journal volume
- 1
- Journal issue
- 1
- Page start
- 31
- Page end
- 33
- Language
- English
Relations
- Parents:
- In Collection:
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