Teacher | Student
Originally produced in: France
Also available in: en

Activities

1. Tick the right answer (several answers possible)
1. The presented materials depict some aspects:
of an inhabited zone located in the area of fortifications around Paris, which existed from the times of the Second Empire until the destruction of fortifications during the interwar period.
of Parisian suburbs that developed at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century.
of space where Parisian outcasts settled.
of space where marginalized and homeless people gathered.


2. The “zoniers” were:
poor Parisians who found or built precarious housing units in the military zone surrounding Paris where no construction was permitted.
those excluded from the modernization of the Paris city center by the prefect Haussmann and his successors.
habitual criminals not allowed to stay in Paris.


3. Eugène Atget’s photographs of the “zoniers”:
are taken a report on precarious housing and misery in Paris.
are taken albums created by Atget presenting the picturesque Paris.
are “stolen pictures”, taken without the consent of the inhabitants of the Zone.

Synthesis question

1. Using the photographs by Eugene Atget, write either:
  • an historical illustrated article
  • a double page of a history book
  • an illustrated report
  • a docu-drama text
2. With the help of all the documents, explain in ten lines what the Zone was and outline the different representations on the Zone and the “zoniers” at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century.

Questions of synthesis

  1. Using the photographs by Eugene Atget, write either:
    • an historical illustrated article
    • a double page of a history book
    • an illustrated report
    • a docu-drama text
    The exercise increases the awareness of the anachronistic dimension of presented texts, which adverts to the idea of methodological anachronism, intended to make us think, introduced by Nicole Loraux in her famous article “Eloge de l’anachronisme en histoire” published in Le genre humain, n° 27, 1993, pp. 23-39 (reprinted in “Les voies traversières de Nicole Loraux. Une helléniste à la croisée des sciences socials”, EspacesTemps Les Cahiers / Clio Histoire, Femmes et Sociétés, 2005, pp. 127-139). However, when the Commission du Vieux Paris was created, Eugène Atget wished that the old quarters of Paris that are bound to disappear and small businesses condemned to oblivion by modernity should be photographed systematically. The images he immortalised in photographic series and albums help to create a report on the past. Eugène Atget’s photographs focus, on one hand, on architecture outside the town (old dwellings mostly abandoned or re-used, often unsanitary and overcrowded habitats of the homeless, cabins made of recycled materials) and, on the other, on poor families, their way of living and works they perform to survive.
    Afterwards, the students can write about the situation on the urban outskirts in the contemporary times. They can focus on: rural-urban areas where agricultural land is being limited by both the development of housing estates and urbanization, the rise of new towns and different areas of joint development, commercial spaces and business parks often located next to agricultural, urban and industrial fallow land, which today form a particular suburban landscape, and finally areas currently occupied by migrants and outsiders that are reminiscent of the shanty towns that flourished in Parisian suburbs until the 60s.
  2. With the help of all the documents, explain in ten lines what the Zone was and outline the different representations on the Zone and the “zoniers” at the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century.
    This is mainly to show the diversity and complexity of representations that often expressed in clear-cut judgments and sales blurb which were not devoid of eugenic or racist thoughts, some of which are not much different, in their simplistic attitude, from the approach of modern politicians and contemporary media to migrants, nomads, the homeless and all the socially excluded.