The latest techniques of photography—which lay at the feet of a cathedral the very houses that so often seemed to us, close to, almost as high as the steeples,… and against a pale and faded background manage to keep a huge horizon under the arch of a bridge—only these, as far as I can see, might, like the kiss, derive from what we supposed a thing of definite aspect, the hundred other things which it also is, since each one is relative to a no less legitimate perspective.
                                                          - Within a Budding Grove

Proust celebrated the novel ways of seeing the world afforded by advances made in photographic technology. Perhaps the anonymous author(s) of these photographs valued the capacity of the panoramic format to convey the impressive breadth of spaces in Paris transformed under the urban planning reforms initiated in the 1860s by Georges-Eugène Haussmann and implemented through the end of the century.

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Unidentified Artist, Untitled (panorama of [*street],Paris), 1890s
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Transfer from the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Gift of Dr. Robert Drapkin, 2.2002.2744; 2.2002.2763; *2.2002.2693