This book turns a compelling new lens on thinking about the history of Paris and photography. The invention of photography changed how history could be written. But the now commonplace assumptions-that photographs capture fragments of lost time or present emotional gateways to the past-that structure today's understandings did not emerge whole cloth in 1839. Focusing on one of photography's birthplaces, Paris and the Cliche of History tells the story of how photographs came to be imagined as documents of the past. Author Catherine E. Clark analyzes photography's effects on historical...