“150 years were needed to write this book,” notes author and historian Patrice de Moncan in the introduction of Paris Avant-Après, a book comparing Charles Marville’s 19th century pictures of Paris with photos of the same spots taken by his team today. A literary exaggeration perhaps, but representative of the labour of love the book entailed. 150 years is in fact the time elapsed since Marville began photographing the changing city of Paris, and an anniversary that Patrice de Moncan was determined to celebrate. The project, the largest ever undertaken on the works of Marville, involved sifting through the photographer’s creations, then attempting to find the remaining traces in today’s city. In other words, as de Moncan says, “to put our feet in Marville’s and place our objective in exactly the same spot as he’d placed his.” The result is an impressive and attractive book, featuring over 730 photos and 40 maps spread across 450 pages. Weighing around 3kg, it is a publication to lay down on a table and lovingly pore over. Endlessly fascinating, it is an important reference not only on the the Paris of the second empire, but also on the city as it stands in 2010.
“What is so fascinating about Marville’s pictures” explains Patrice de Moncan, “is that they caught on record one of the most important eras in the history of Paris.” The period is indeed a crucial one, as it marked the end of the medieval city and the beginning of one of the world’s first truly modern cities.  Napolean III, who had returned to France from exile in England, chose the Baron Haussmann to undertake a complete regeneration of the city, ripping down the dense and insalubrious buildings and bringing in wide boulevards, plumbing and green spaces. In his pictures, Marville, the official photographer for the city of Paris, captured a world between the two. In many of the original photos, some of the Haussmannian buildings and traces of the Boulevards are already in place, but they are surrounded by the vestiges of a denser, older city.
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