“The poignancy of a photograph comes from looking back to a fleeting moment in a floating world.” Allen Ginsberg’s observation seems to be lost on the dozens of eager tourists crammed on Pont des Arts at dusk as they break the heavy, tinted air with bright flashes and grimacing smiles. The bridge is often the set for wedding catalogue shoots – ‘brides’ in ice- white dresses holding lingering kisses for photographers. Catalogue couples such as these are ubiquitous at the well-known landmarks of the city, accompanied always by their photographer and surrounded by a gaggle of tourists. These artificial displays of affection add charm to the surroundings of those assembled on Pont des Arts eager to capture the first illumination of the Eiffel Tower through their digital lenses. With its staged romance and delighted, insincere observers, the scene is banal – an uncomfortable contradiction to the perception of Paris as a place of spontaneity and of cultural authenticity.
What I always find striking about the black and white postcards of the city, which fill the souvenir stands on the banks of the Seine, is that the landmarks, cafés, shop fronts, bridges and streetlamps that they depict resemble, almost exactly, those we see today. It seems photos’ subjects change yet Paris stays the same. Some might feel inclined to say the same of any great city, which like Paris deeply values its architectural heritage – the consistency of the Parisian landscape, however, is unparalleled. The neoclassical remodelling of Paris in the 19th century has created a city in which the newer design fits seamlessly with the Baroque and Classical architecture that went before it. Unlike Paris, Europe’s other modern and cultural centres offer revision and transformation – London’s skyline juxtaposes old and new. Berlin is a visual testament to Europe’s turbulent history but Paris, it seems, has seen the last century pass by, leaving no ostensible mark.
Photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau immortalised this Parisian landscape from the 1930s onwards. Their street photography revels in uncovering beauty in the everyday. “No movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street” claimed Doisneau. This photography was acclaimed for elevating the ordinary to an art form. Visitors who flock to Paris are, in part, drawn here for phenomenological reasons: they hope to walk the same pavements and sit on the same wicker chairs as Doisneau’s and Cartier-Bresson’s monochrome counterparts. It seems then that through their permeating influence on our perception of Paris; these iconic images have become an object of collective cultural memory: a tangible link to the past serving as a comforting reminder to the modern age that we are not very different at all.
According to the French historian Pierre Nora, to understand the concept of a collective or public cultural memory we must consider two elements: time and place. In considering time we can draw the essential opposition of history and memory. Memory refers to what actually happened, bearing in mind that what actually happened is perceived differently by each individual, group or society who considers it. Thus, it is a living and fluid concept in permanent evolution. History, on the other hand, is an inaccurate reconstruction of the past based on a critical discourse seeking to establish a truth. This critical approach inhibits the existence of spontaneous memory and results ultimately, in an annihilation of what has in reality taken place.
Nora’s second distinction place is the distinction between what he calls ‘lieux de mémoire’ and ‘millieux de mémoire’. The ‘lieux de mémoire’ or sites of memory are constructed to serve as a reminder once the real environment or ‘millieux’ of memory ceases to exist. Nora asserts, “We speak so much of memory because so little of it is left.” He argues that we must increasingly be content with the ‘lieux de mémoire’, places, monuments and memorials, which remind us of a past and broken memory.
The way we view the past was revolutionised by the invention of the camera. Photography, unlike any other medium, facilitates the evolutionary aspect of memory; its format encourages revival after periods of dormancy, and it is vulnerable to appropriation and manipulation. Photography enables the continuation of memory since it is a vehicle of perception – it creates the powerful illusion that the photograph’s subject, the photographer’s depiction of the subject, and the viewer’s perception of the subject are all one and the same.
History, in claiming universality, belongs to no one, claims Nora. Memory on the other hand, like snap-shot photography, belongs at once to individuals, groups and societies. He describes memory as “a perpetual and actual phenomenon that ties us to the eternal present”. Henri Cartier-Bresson echoed a parallel sentiment when evoking the power of photography: “I suddenly understood that a photograph could fix eternity in an instant.” Paris is considered the home of photojournalism and against its constant backdrop we can trace the capture of many significant moments worthy of memory and history: Hitler and Speer posing before the Eiffel tower in June 1940, Richard Wright standing before a Paris café in 1946, students and police clashing around a cobblestone barricade on the Boulevard Saint Michel in 1968.
In comparison, the contemporary scene on Pont des Arts may seem initially a disappointment. Yet, the tourists taking photographs here are themselves too creating a private cultural memory. The advent of street photography saw the movement criticised for its banality, its subjects deemed not worthy of an artistic medium.
The scene I described in the first paragraph, which on the surface appears little more than an outward demonstration of commercialism, is in itself a facet of our collective cultural memory. The people, in the simple act of gathering here, illustrate our underlying connection with both the past and the future. And the consistency of the landscape emphasises that the bridge, and indeed Paris, is both ‘millieu’ and ‘lieu’.
