Speaker: Catherine E. Clark, MIT Global Studies and Languages
Date: September 12, 2014 at 2:30 pm
Location E51-275

When “This was Paris in 1970” launched, its 15,000 participants made it the largest amateur photo contest ever held in France. Sponsored by the multimedia megastore the FNAC and the city of Paris, it sought to create a comprehensive record of the capital during the month of May. Participants ended up documenting the contemporary city through the lens of their own engagement with Paris’s century-long tradition of street photography. This talk explores the amateur’s distinctive view of the city alongside the broader methodological question of how to approach these photographs as historical documents.

This Sahin Lecture is sponsored by the History section and is co-sponsored by the Research Seminar in French and Francophone Studies in Global Studies and Languages