A series of images from 1970s Paris has captured the French capital’s distinctive style and lost charm, offering a glimpse of the city before it became the bustling metropolis it is today.
A stunning photo exhibition of amateur snapshots taken around five decades ago offers a glimpse of cobbled streets lined with small shops, as well as hidden Parisian Renaissance courtyards.
From June 1, the Paris City Historical Library has displayed a selection of 100,000 colour and monochrome pictures taken by 15,000 photographers across each of the 1,755 sections of the capital.
The striking images show bustling streets filled with school children and shopkeepers sweeping in front of their storefronts.
They show a city plastered with colourful political posters, vintage cars, and being torn apart and rebuilt at the same time.
It is a far cry from how Paris is perceived now, with its chain restaurants and fast-fashion retailers lining the streets.
One photo shows a tiny tin bus seen collecting locals from a cobbled street, while another shows love-birds staring in awe at the Eiffel Tower.
Another black-and-white photo shows Parisian ladies sitting on a bench holding onto elegant handbags.
In one image, a tiny tin bus is seen collecting locals from a cobbled street
The roads were lined with vintage cars
A newly-wed couple hold hands while taking in the sight of Paris’s famous Eiffel tower
One image captured schoolchildren walking along a road next to a construction site
A shopkeeper is pictured sweeping with a wooden broom
‘These amateur photographers cast a tender and attentive eye over the elderly,’ Juliette Eyméoud, the exhibition curator, said.
Bérengère de l’Épine, an archivist with the library, said that the photographs seemed fresh and presented ‘a cinematographic edge that gives us a view of a Paris that is at once familiar and deliciously out of step’.
The collection lets the viewer ‘explore a city in motion in all its diversity: small businesses, top tourist spots, working-class neighbourhoods, new housing estates and wasteland’, she wrote.
The images from the 70s came after the huge May 1968 student revolt, which saw parts of Paris bulldozed under the instructions of the modernising president Georges Pompidou.
Gentrification was just beginning in the working-class areas of the northeast, where many lived in near-slum conditions, with shared lavatories and bathrooms.
In the spring of 1970, large parts of Paris were being demolished and rebuilt, while entire neighbourhoods were disappearing.
So the city and the French retailer Fédération Nationale d’Achats des Cadres (FNAC) launched a contest for Paris photographers to document everything before it was gone.
Each participant drew a square of the 1,755 areas by lottery and was assigned to photograph whatever was inside it, including streets, facades, and ordinary moments.
Happy children are pictured playing in front of a construction area
A car is seen seemingly broken down on a cobbled Paris street
Hidden Parisian Renaissance courtyards feature in the photographs
A black-and-white photo shows Parisian ladies sitting on a bench holding onto elegant handbags
Two men work on a car in the street as a passerby stops to take a glance
Images from 1970s Paris have shown pavements lined with wooden boards amid roadwords
On April 25, 1970, some 15,000 amateur photographers showed up at the Halles de Baltard to register. More than two-thirds of them were under the age of thirty.
The original rules of the competition required participants to surrender all rights to their photographs.
Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the most celebrated photographers in the world and a member of the jury, resigned in protest.
Professional photography unions condemned the terms, the city of Paris withdrew its sponsorship, the FNAC rewrote the rules to respect copyright, and the contest went ahead.
The result was 30,000 colour slides and 70,000 black-and-white prints – around 100,000 images of a Paris that has since partly vanished.
The entire archive is now held at the Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris (Historical Library of the City of Paris), and the full collection has been digitised.
An exhibition drawn from the archive runs from June 1 to October 7, 2026.
