EIn fact, anyone who walks through Paris with their eyes wide open should have seen these small oval flaps with a keyhole at some point. They are attached to the facades of older houses at about calf height. But mostly you walk past them like downpipes or manhole covers. Almost nobody knows their function anymore.
When they were installed at the end of the 19th century, these cast-iron openings, which led to the buildings’ newly laid gas main, signified the connection of light and heat: magic words of the time, synonymous with modernity and progress. William Somerset Maugham wrote that the future is something that most people only love when it is past.
In times of inflated gas prices and the gradual move away from fossil fuels, looking at Jub Mönster’s photos of the former gas connections in Paris could make you nostalgic. Around 50 photographs from his series can currently be seen in the “Maison Heinrich Heine” in the Paris Cité Universitaire. You open your eyes to a curious sign of the city’s history that is gradually threatening to disappear.
“City of Lights”
The Bremen artist took the first photo of a gas connection flap in the 1980s. Since then, around 2000 pictures have been taken, because he quickly sharpened his eye for his unusual motif and its diversity at the same time. It’s always random snapshots that appear in front of his lens when he’s strolling around. They are neither illuminated nor post-processed. The charm of these photos is the narrow section, which makes the gas flaps appear like a portrait gallery, especially in their sequence.
Nostalgia
:
The Traces of Time
Despite their specific purpose and an always similar shape, they are unique, bear the marks of time with crumbling remains of paint or have been whitewashed almost beyond recognition in their century-old existence. Often, however, they also become a design element of a facade: lovingly surrounded by mosaics, integrated into painted decorations or as part of a graffito. In Jub Mönster’s photos, the urban inventory has an aesthetic quality. They are reminiscent of the minimalist, serial photographs by Hilla and Bernd Becher.
Paris as “Ville Lumière”: This designation supposedly goes back to the time of Louis XIV, who had his capital illuminated with oil lanterns and torches. But it was only in the course of the 19th century that the nickname really became popular, because the streets at night were gradually illuminated by gas-powered lanterns. Around 1860, when Georges-Eugène Haussmann transformed old Paris into a modern metropolis, 56,000 gas lanterns are said to have been lit.
Ten years of the FAZ magazine
:
Unvarnished and unretouched
Image: Jork Weismann
The advanced energy was channeled from new industrial plants in the northern suburbs through an increasingly dense distribution network to homes, first to the ground floor, where suddenly shops, businesses, and restaurants could be lit. A little later, vertical lines led to the upper floors: After the turn of the century, “Gazà tous les étages” was written on blue signs proudly displayed on house facades, because gas was now also used for heating and cooking.
A little lower, near the floor and easily accessible, were these whimsical cast-iron port hatches. The Paris gas company kept the right key. The fire brigade also had access to turn off the tap in an emergency.
Jub Mönster’s photos have not only artistic but also historical significance. That is why he recently bequeathed a comprehensive selection of his photos to the archive of the Bibliothèque historiquede la Ville de Paris.