My proposed paper develops in a different, though related, perspective the subject of my PhD thesis (Urban Topography and the Collective Memory: Paris and the Commune 1871 to 1878), which is nearing completion, and aspects of which are beginning to be published in article-form.1

The Commune has been the subject of much scholarly research and interpretation which, in the domain of literature and the visual arts, has focused mainly on the work of the avant-garde (for example, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Courbet, Manet, and the Impressionists), or on the obviously political novels and journalistic work of Hugo, Vallès, and Zola. I will argue instead that it is often ‘middlebrow’ bourgeois cultural forms such as the universal exhibition, the illustrated journal, and photography, rather than the avant-garde, which provide some of the best insights into the promulgation of official collective memories, myths, and propaganda. By drawing on a number of theories of collective memory and forgetting (for example, Nietzsche, Halbwachs, Nora, and Casey), I will compare and contrast the memorialist and subjective tonalities of a selection of articles and illustrations published as a guide to the 1878 Exposition universelle in Le Monde illustré (a conservative and ostensibly non-political illustrated journal of the period), with examples drawn from Charles Marville’s specially commissioned photographic display of the city past and present at the Exposition itself (with a potential audience of over 16 million people), in order to show how such representations replicated official versions of Paris after the Commune.