Paris Underground (Hardcover)

Paris Underground by Caroline Archer & Alexandre Parre (published by Mark Batty) is a great new book dedicated to the Parisian underground art. A history lesson - Quarries started to be dug under the streets of Paris during the twelfth century to provide the raw materials needed to build the city above. At the time no attention was paid to the amount of rock being removed so when one quarry was depleted the workers moved on to dig another. This practise continued on and off till December 17th 1774 when the inevitable happened. The space left by the removal of the stones that built places such as Notre Dame finally gave was as one of the city's streets collapsed into underground darkness. More collapses followed so digging was stopped and task-forces were then set up to check, chart and reinforce the abandoned quarries and the tunnels, of which there are a staggering 177 miles worth, till they were made safe.

The first third of Paris Underground is dedicated to the history of the quarries (La Mexicaine de la Perforation gets a mention) and the official inscriptions that were created by the surveyors & builders. These are most made up of letters and numbers representing dates, depths, relevant engineer's initials and road signs indicating their actual whereabouts in relation to the Paris streets above. However, even this simple text and lettering is really interesting. No two appear to be the same due to the fact that the artists involved in their creation were not artists at all, they were just the builders and each individual writer had a different style. It actually makes for some really interesting studying of the letter forms and their accompanying text. Once the official parts are taken care of we are led to the underground world of the "clandestine visitors" art. Out of the original 276 entrances only a few remain but this hasn't stopped thousands of artists from illegally going underground and working in those inhospitable subterranean world. Over the years there have been innumerable pieces of art created inside the tunnels. These range from scribbles, sketches and tags to huge painted pieces, stone sculptures and mosaics, collectively known as Kata Art. The rest of this book is dedicated to their work. Perhaps the most interesting of these are the "tracts." These are hand written or printed documents that are hidden around the different sites. Some are used for communication between the cataphiles while others are just there for people to view their opinions, poems, short stories etc. These are considered the real treasures of the quarries as they don't last very long in the hot and damp atmosphere.

It's a really great book. I love it for so many reasons; it's not just because it's a beautifully bound and formatted book with fantastic text and photos, I love the art, I love Paris, and I am so much more than just intrigued by the tunnels them selves. The book weighs in at 192 pages, 8" x 91/2", case bound with dust jacket. Seeing as it's illegal for us to go underground in Paris and that the authors and photographer have done all the work legally I guess it'll be the only way that the majority of us will see what's down there so if this kind of thing interests you you could do a lot worse that hooking yourself up with a copy.