All Paris in a Box

1952

All Paris in a Box, 1952. Ilse Bing (American, 1899–1998). Gelatin silver print; image: 40.6 x 50.8 cm (16 x 20 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The A. W. Ellenberger, Sr., Endowment Fund 2019.178 © Estate of Ilse Bing Visiting Paris in 1950, Ilse Bing wrote her husband that the city had become a “giant museum” whose entire splendors could be contained “in a box.”[1] Two years later she shot All Paris in a Box, 1952, which depicts a souvenir vendor’s wares presented in a suitcase. Just as Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-valise contained tiny versions of his masterworks, this suitcase contains images and miniature versions of the famous wonders of the City of Light.
[1] “Paris zeigt sich als Riesenmuseum,” Ilse Bing, letter to Konrad Wolff, Paris, June 11, 1950 (Ilse Bing Archive/Estate of Ilse Bing), quoted in Larisa Dryansky, Ilse Bing: Photography Through the Looking Glass, New York: Abrams, 2006, 58. In some prints of this image, the woman selling these souvenirs is visible.