James Hyman Gallery are pleased to present the online exhibition: Paris Photos. The creation of a new aesthetic

We are not exhibiting at Paris Photo this year but will be in Paris all week. This online exhibition presents a focused selection of photographs from the earliest years of the medium taken in and around Paris.

Foreshadowing the Impressionists, the earliest photographers, placed at the heart of their work the modern metropolis. Their photographs present the heart of the French Empire: symbols of modernity such as new railways and buildings and the greatest architecture of the past from magnificent churches and Cathedrals to more intimate settings.

They also made use of the new railways in opening up areas around Paris, travelling along the Seine to Argenteuil or journeying to the ceramics factory at Sevres. Refuting Baudelaire’s 1859 criticism of photography as a mechanical tool of the scientist, rather than an art form, these photographs witness the birth of a sublime new aesthetic. On the one hundred and seventieth anniversary of Baudelaires famous essay Painters of Modern Life (1873), these Photographers of Modern Life truly are some of the greatest artists in the history of the photographic medium.