Saturday Good Reads: Paris 1914

You’re scanning a blog post, a link catches your attention, you click – and suddenly you’re in a world of a hundred years ago.

Technically, this isn’t a “good read” but a “good look.” Paris 1914 is a collection color photographs from the Musee Albert Kahn in Boulogne, covering roughly the period from 1910 to 1940.

We spent a week in Paris in 1999, and some of these photos – of the Rue de Rivoli and Rue des Martyrs, for example – look remarkably the same as I remember. They were streets near our hotel (we were on the Right Bank, near the Opera).

The first frame is a “comic book” short film, entitled Ombre Morte. It’s nine minutes or so in length, and it’s "very French.” The subtitles are in English; there’s no audio narration. The photographs begin with the second frame.

I slowly advanced each frame, studying each photo, surprised at how contemporary many of them look.

Make a journey to Paris 1914.