The Paris Commune of 1870

Like a tombstone on Napoleon III’s empire, the Commune ushered in a new political era, while also allowing Disdéri, Marville, and Nadar to actualize their personal politics through photography.  In particular, these men experienced and photographed the Commune from three distinct perspectives. Reacting to this revolutionary event meant that the photographers were recording and preserving the politics of France.  Above all else, they were displaying their personal levels of political consciousness.  The Commune resolved any doubts about their states of awareness.  In order to better understand the political impact of their involvement, it is crucial to review the key aspects of the Commune itself: its precursors, ideology and primary events.

Precursors

Paris was primed for the Commune by four circles of cause and effect. First, the French had already witnessed many periods of revolutionary activity before the Commune.  The French Revolution in 1789 was followed by uprisings in 1830 and 1848.  Historian Alain Faure suggests that the Commune can be seen in chrysalis form during the 1860s (Schafer 26).  Indeed, the energy and fervor of the first uprising was undoubtedly channeled into the events of 1848 and 1870.
Secondly, Napoleon III’s struggle through the last years of his empire created a transition into the Commune. The first hint of the Emperor’s downfall appeared in his faltering foreign policies. His glorious return from Austrian conquests, in 1859, serves as the turning point of his career.  Napoleon’s successes were countered by new failures.  By the end of his second decade in power: “Almost every one of his foreign adventures had ended in disaster and his Empire, faced by a powerful and aggressive Prussia, was without a single European ally”(Aronson 42).  Adding insult to injury, massive changes simultaneously occurred on the French homeland.  In 1867, the Crédit Mobilier Bank collapsed, which signaled economic disaster for the regime (Schafer 21).
Thirdly, it is important to note that while public opinion and meetings were repressed during the majority of the Second Empire, the Liberalization of the late 1860s opened the floodgates of public frustration. Napoleon III sought to gradually liberalize France by permitting cultural discussions but steering the working-class away from political solutions (Schafer 20). The presence of numerous political meetings in 1869 hints at the imminent creation of the Commune. “La Commune n’est pas née des circonstances, la guerre franco-prussienne de 1870, opinion couramment admise, mais bien de l’action révolutionnaire, en particulier du mouvement des réunions publiques dans les années qui l’ont précédée” (Dalotel, Faure, and Freiermuth 7). (The commune was not born of circumstance, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, but rather from revolutionary action, in particular from the movement of public meetings in the years that preceded it.)Here, the fall of the Empire is re-envisioned from a more internal stance.  The Franco-Prussian war was not the main instigator.  Instead, politically active Parisians played a significant role in the end of the Empire.  Citizens took full advantage of their reinstated rights to meet in public.  These meetings witnessed the sharing of the people’s frustrations against the government. Essentially, the Second Empire collapsed both from the outside and from within. 
Finally, the organization of people had direct ties to Haussmann’s urbanization. Groups of Parisians who met freely during Liberalization became known as the Communards. The Communards was a group inspired to revolt against the policies of Haussmann.  During the 1850s, the people living in the slums of central Paris were forced to migrate to the 18th, 19th and 20th arrondissements, on the outskirts of Paris.  As Haussmannization pierced through their neighborhoods, they moved northwards en masse.  It was in these northern suburbs that the communards would congregate during the late 1860s.  These displaced Parisians found themselves in new living areas that lacked basic amenities like public water fountains and hospitals (Edwards 8). Their frustrations and struggles continued throughout the 1860s and were exasperated by the large-scale starvation during the Siege of Paris in 1870. “This shift of population would be shown in the Commune, for…it was from the north and north-east that the revolutionary battalions descended on the Hôtel de Ville” (Edwards 9).

A Socialist Effort

            Pierre Vésinier, an elected Commune member, described the Commune as a socialist movement: “The armed people of Paris were fighting…for the abolition of the exploitation of man by man; for the destruction of all privileges, monopolies, despotism, and economical, political and religious tyrannies…for the complete, radical, and absolute emancipation of all the working classes” (The Paris Commune 233). Themes of exploitation and liberation became pervasive vocabulary terms for these French revolutionaries.  This socialist foundation was no doubt one of elements that attracted Nadar, as a bohémien, to the cause.
Socialist rhetoric was not a foreign concept in Europe or in France during Napoleon III’s reign.  Originally, the International Working Men’s Association was created in 1864 in London.  The group’s influence crossed over to the mainland and took root in France.  This group informally referred to as the ‘International’ inspired many Communards.  Following 1867, labor organizations took advantage of Napoleon III’s Liberalization and formed more militant approaches to voicing their problems (Schafer 15). In 1868, the International became semi-clandestine following government persecution and a year later the Empire furthered this persecution through show of military strength by ending a mining strike.  The mounting tension of the labor movements in France contributed to the socialist ideals of the Commune.
Outside of France, the Commune’s revolutionary potential intrigued individuals, including Karl Marx.  Marx recognized the Parisian movement’s capacity to further a more pure style of revolution: “…the next attempt of the French Revolution will be no longer, as before, to transfer the bureaucratic-military machine from one hand to another, but to smash it, and this is the preliminary condition for every real people’s revolution on the continent” (The Paris Commune 197). Marx watched the Commune’s unraveling with much interest and saw its basic structure as a model for future revolutions. 
In fact, the Commune borrowed from Marx’s ideology.  In 1871, the leading organizational group, the Central Committee of the Republican Federation of the National Guard, proclaimed: “Workers, do not make any mistaken about it: this is war to the death between parasitism and labour, between exploitation and production.  If you have had enough of stagnating in ignorance and poverty… then workers, stand up and be counted” (The Paris Commune 120). These words of encouragement echo the famous Communist Manifesto phrase:  “Workingmen of all countries, unite” (Marx and Engels 44)!

Photographing the Sequence of Events

For Disdéri, Marville, and Nadar, the Commune represents an event that inspired interest.  As Parisian residents, they all experienced first-hand the events of 1870-1871.  They witnessed first hand the destruction and political unsteadiness and were keen on reproducing their unique reactions to the events.  Disdéri photographed for profit, Nadar participated physically and on a personal level, and Marville conformed his photography to the will of the ruling government.
The second half of 1870 was a flurry of revolutionary events and photography became the best medium to document it all. “…The rapidity by which events unfolded during the Commune was more conducive to the production of prints and photographs”(Shafer 172). By August, Napoleon III was waging war against Prussia and the Liberal Empire was taking its last breath.  On September 2, he surrendered at Sedan to the Prussian army.  Just two days later, the Empire officially collapsed and before the end of the month, Prussian troops surrounded Paris.  With Napoleon under house arrest, Eugénie in exile and the Republicans scrambling to maintain power, Parisians were left to fend for themselves as the Siege of Paris began.  What resulted was a tumultuous nine months known as the Commune of Paris.
There were hints at the Commune before the Empire even fell. Beginning on August 8th, the International organized large demonstrations in Paris to show their opposition against France’s participation in the war.  Within twenty-four hours of the Empire’s official downfall, the International formed ‘vigilance committees’ for each Parisian neighborhood.  By October, cities across France including Marseille, Toulouse and Saint-Etienne were establishing communes and proclaiming new governments.  In Paris, the people launched a new government known as the Gouvernement de la Défense nationale.
The Commune declared itself to the world as a legitimate new government.  In its Declaration of Principles, presented on November 28, 1870, the Communards stated their primary goals, which were to form a “ republican league for a last-ditch resistance… with the purpose of safeguarding France’s honor, preserving its territorial integrity and rights; of resisting any idea of capitulation or shameful treaty with the invader; and lastly, of supporting a democratic and social republic…”(The Paris Commune 79). An important component of this government was the Central Committee of the Twenty Arrondissements.  It was this group that called for the Commune de Paris to replace the provisional government. 
At the same time, however, the Republican government attempted to regroup and regain control.  On January 28th, they signed an armistice with Germany and held elections for the National Assembly, temporarily headquartered in Bordeaux. Meanwhile, the Commune continued to develop. It was during the Commune’s zenith that Nadar played his most significant role.

Nadar’s Activism

            Nadar’s commercial activity stopped with the 1870 Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune.  He no longer photographed, but rather physically participated.  Nadar became a Communard.  Thus the primary significance of Nadar’s role during the Commune was his sacrifice of photographic work for his political beliefs.
Instead, he applied his aeronautic experience to help the Commune and became a military advisor on the use of balloons. “The Franco-Prussian War and the siege of Paris give Nadar a final opportunity for aeronautics” (Hambourg, Heilbrun and Néagu 254). Nadar was not hesitant in joining the Commune’s cause.  He created a military company of balloonists that ascended numerous times for observation purposes.  By the end of September 1870, Nadar had physically helped to establish the Aeronautic Postal service, or la Poste Aérienne, in the Montmartre neighborhood (Nadar Sous 54).
Because of his personal involvement in the Commune, Nadar produced no artistic work during this two year time period.  There is, however, a representative image of this time that shows the interior of le Géant as it inflates.

This is another wonderful example of how Nadar took an object and played with the viewer’s interpretation.  Upon first glance, our attention is drawn into the center of photo, to an area half illuminated and half shadowed.  The top half of the photo is an unknown shadow that fades into an orderly semi-circle of lines, while the bottom half of the photo is a flurry of intriguing textures.  What we are looking at, however, is the bunched up balloon material waiting to expand and the other half of the balloon has already taken shape in the background. Half filled with hot air, the photo has a whimsy, almost futuristic aura that reminds one of Nadar’s imagination and creativity. While Nadar did not photograph the Commune, he did document the event.  In particular, he wrote a book entitled “Sous l’incendie.” Under the section titled Matin du 4, Nadar depicts the morning of September 4th, when the Empire fell.  He described how people flooded into the center of Paris and converged on the Seine.  He expresses the immense relief felt among himself and friends: “Pour le moment…nos bons Parisiens sont tout entiers à l’infinie volupté de sentir l’air libre dans leurs poitrines depuis

si longtemps étouffées” (Nadar, Sous  27). He identified with the Parisians that could finally fill their lungs with fresh air, with a free air, after such a long period of suffocation.

As the Commune Ends…

The Commune’s momentum slowly dissipated near the end of March and into April.  By May, Communes across the country were ending and so the national potential for revolution was reduced to just the Parisian group.  Incredible violence erupted on the streets of Paris during the month of May.  On the first of the month, National French troops bombarded the capital.  The fighting between Communards and National soldiers--essentially Frenchmen against Frenchmen--escalated throughout May and culminated in particularly bloody week known as the semaine sanglante.  May 21st-28th brought about intensified street fighting and the début of communard executions.  The Communards met officially for the last time on May 25th, and their barricades fell just three days later. 

Between twenty and forty thousand were killed during the eight May days of street fighting, fires, and summary executions… Many thousands more were arrested and twenty-three were formally put to death by order of the military tribunal (another thousand died under miserable conditions while awaiting trial). Nearly three thousand were deported to New Caledonia.  Those lucky enough to survive did not return to France until the general amnesty of 1880. (Przyblyski 59)

As the Republican government reclaimed its singular position of power in France, anything associated with the Commune was silenced or erased.  The executions of Communards, for example, continued well into November 1871.  It is at this violent stage of the Commune that Disdéri thrived.

Disdéri’s Souvenirs

            Similar to his business priorities during the Second Empire, Disdéri made the most of the Commune and turned a profit via photography. Disdéri capitalized on the public’s new interest in images of destruction:

The uprising of the Commune of Paris in 1871 was one of the few political events in the nineteenth century to have been photographically documented from beginning to end… After the rebellion was crushed by national troops, the ruins of prominent buildings torched by the Communards became a favorite subject.  A new market for macabre photographic souvenirs was established. (Icons 88)

Disdéri documented the Commune’s architectural damages like many photographers, but he specialized in photographing those who died from the fighting.  One disturbing example is pictured here.

Near the end of the Commune, Disdéri photographed groups of dead Communards.  In this photo, which is so different in style from his previous portraits, the bodies are lined up and stacked up in box coffins, ready to be identified with numbers on their chests.  The first impression of this image can be hard to process.  Some bodies look stiff, while others slouch to one side. Some of the men’s hands have been crossed, while others are covered up.  In this organized disarray, there is disregard shown for the corpses.

Some lay half naked; others have their battle wounds exposed to the public. Perhaps Disdéri relied on his former portraiture work for photography the dead.  By this, I mean that Disdéri’s direct and straightforward composition mimics his previous work.  It suggests that Disdéri was trying to record and not embellish, as if to assist in police identification. 
This genre of ‘portraiture’—documentation—during and after the Commune contributed to a new journalistic use for photography.  Historically, the Commune is seen as “an important milestone along the path of photography’s progressive refinement as a tool of social oversight and regulation” (Przyblyski 55).  If this progression is true, then Disdéri significantly contributed to this offshoot with his documentary style of photography.  While fulfilling the demands of a job for the Republican government, Disdéri was also paving the way for new uses of photography.
Disdéri’s work during the Commune is a crucial development in understanding Disdéri’s photographic priorities. Before the Commune, he appeared loyal to Napoleon III and his Empire. During the Commune, Disdéri stopped all work with Napoleon III after his fall from power, which would seem to say that he was not pro-Napoleon, as much as driven by necessity.  Whoever was in a position of power attracted Disdéri, since it was they who would offer work.

Marville’s Conformity

In keeping with his politically flexible persona, Marville conformed to the new surroundings in the 1870s.  There is little documentation about his activities during the Commune, but it appears that at the height of the conflict, he quit photographing for pay.  Since there was no official, or rather singular, government he had no photographic orders to fill. After the Commune, however, Marville began working for the new government in the late 1870s. Once on the payroll of the Third Republic, Marville photographed the visual consequences of the Commune as well as the continuation of urbanization projects.  He was back to photographing the physical workings of French politics.
Marville’s participation with the Commune is best viewed in terms of his ‘before and after’ collection.  The ‘before’ segment of his work comes from a collection of 425 photos originally commissioned by Haussmann in the early 1850s.  The ‘after’ portion, shot between 1876 and 1877, consisted of photographs commissioned by the republican members of the Municipal Council of the City of Paris (Wilson 57). These images include projects that began under the Second Empire but were being completed under the Third Republic.  Some prominent areas of Paris included boulevard Saint-Germain, boulevard Haussmann, and avenue de l’Opéra.  Colette Wilson suggests that Marville’s before and after photographs helped to erase the memory of the Commune. “Marville in 1878 can be seen to convey, through the use of his ‘objective’ lens, the essence of that centrist ‘bourgeois republicanism’…” (Wilson 59). Marville reverted back to photographing for the government, and was working within the demands of the Republic.  There are a limited number of examples of Marville’s work that dealt with the destruction of the Commune. 
One particular pair of photographs highlights an important symbol of Paris: the Hôtel de Ville. Situated in the center of the city, the Hôtel was the City Hall of Paris since the 14th century.  The first image shows the Hôtel of the Second Empire in its elegant and dominant glory.

Like a picture-perfect postcard, this photo highlights a spacious road leading to the Hôtel that is lined with trees. Marville chose an angle that could not have been more straightforward.  The road visually leads the viewer directly to the front of the Hôtel.  There are no people in the streets, no commotion, just a calming sense of peace.  The only hint at human life is a carriage hidden away on the right hand side. When looking at the Hôtel itself, we can see the ornate decorations on the building, like the clock centered in the tower and prim looking curtains in every window.  From Marville’s

photograph, it is easily to see why this building was a symbol of beauty and decadence during the Second Empire.
The peace and beauty of that era would not last however.  The second image shows the Hôtel in a state of ruin after 1871.

The building was burned down to a skeleton during the Commune.  This photo, taken for a side angle and most likely from atop an opposing building, highlights the extent of Commune damage.  Like in his previous work, Marville exemplifies a documentary approach with a wide angle as if trying to capture all of the building.  The top portions of the Hôtel suffered the worst; only the strongest walls and arches remain.  Windows that previously displayed curtains now resemble black holes. The building now has a charred and sad look.

This image could have evoked many sentiments for Parisians, once again, depending on their political persuasions.  Perhaps they were maddened by the destructive nature of the Commune if they were Republicans, or maybe they felt that the Hôtel became a symbol of the Commune’s powerful presence in Paris.  In the same unknown way, the burnt building could have been likened to a symbol of success or one of failure.