Passage Verdeau (Projet d'Agrandissement) - 2nd plate

Erik Desmazieres

"Place Verdeau" is the first image from a suite of 6 etchings, done between 1988 and 1991, titled 'Passages Parisiens - Projets d'Agrandissment' (Parisian Passages - Enlarging Project) in a total edition of 90.

Desmazieres published 60 of the works in 1991 as a portfolio, with a seventh added etched frontispiece. The remaining 30 were published individually, as this impression.

All the images are of the large, ornate passageways that are found throughout Paris, built in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A promenade through the passageways became a chic and fashionable activity for the bourgeois society to partake in. They were THE place to be seen, strolling in one of these innovative and exciting new spaces, some boasting heating or electric lights.

Desmazieres enlarges the passageways and views them from unusual angles. If there are people in the prints they appear almost as insects, only there to give these edifices perspective.

The passageways illustrated in the series, besides Place Verdeau, are: Passage Du Bourg L'Abbé; Galerie Véro-Dodat; Passage Choiseul; Galerie Vivienne and Passage du Caire.