Underneath Paris is a parallel universe of tunnels,
caverns, bones—and party venues. Will Hunt spends a few days and nights
down there with a band of urban explorers…
SOME YEARS AGO, I sat on a stone-cut bench in a dark
chamber in the catacombs of Paris wearing a headlamp and muddied boots,
and listened to the strange story of Félix Nadar, the first man to
photograph the underground of Paris. In 1861, Nadar invented a
battery-operated flash lamp, one of the first artificial lights in the
history of photography, and promptly brought his camera into Paris's
sewers and catacombs. Over three months, Nadar—41, moustachioed, with
unruly red hair—shot in the darkness beneath the streets. He used
18-minute exposures and, as models, wooden mannequins dressed in the
garb of city workers. On the surface, the images of dim, claustrophobic
passageways created a stir. Parisians had heard of the vast subterranean
networks underlying their streets and Nadar brought this dark lattice
to light. The pictures opened up Paris's relationship to its
subterranean spaces—catacombs and crypts, sewers and canals, reservoirs
and utility tunnels—a connection which, over the years, has grown deeper
and more peculiar than in any other city.
For the rest of the story: http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/places/going-souterrain?page=full
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