Monumental Paris presents breathtaking panoramic views of Paris’s famed monuments and historic sites, as well as little-known gems. Covering many fascinating styles and periods, it features the sprawling Louvre museum complex, imposing churches and abbeys, such as Notre Dame and St. Denis, tranquil parks and gardens, and royal palaces and extravagant mansions in the Marais. Straddling the swiftly flowing Seine, and spreading out beneath the heights of Montmartre and Montparnasse, Paris is an apt subject for the panoramic photographer, and in Hervé Champollion the City of Light has found a talented heir to Paris’s photographic tradition. Paris seamlessly melds old and new, the medieval Musée Cluny and Jean Nouvel’s extraordinary Fondation Cartier, the ancient Port-Royal Abbey, and the riotous 1920s Hispano-Moorish delirium of the Great Mosque. Champollion’s achingly beautiful photographs make it evident that Paris is far more than a collection of historic buildings, 19th-century cast-iron frame department stores, and public squares; its numerous parks, gardens, canals, and secret waterways make Paris one of the most verdant cities in Europe. Parisians are both urban and urbane, and Champollion uncovers unfrequented covered passages and cul-de-sacs, such as the Galerie Vivienne, still lined with unusual shops, linking the Palais Royal with Hausmann’s new ‘grand’ boulevards, or the enduring charm of Jazz Age brasseries: la Coupole, le Select, le Dôme and la Rotonde. The panoramic vision of Hervé Champollion makes age-old Paris young again.
