With their half-built foregrounds, struggling vegetation, and inert figures (such as the one posed against the wall), Marville's photographs of the periphery of Paris convey the sense of neighborhoods in transition. Even as the city trumpeted its glories at the 1878 Exposition Universelle, the outskirts became a familiar subject in art and literature, serving as convenient shorthand for the dislocation and exile many Parisians experienced in their changed city.
