Photo A Day: Macabre Beauty

"Macabre Beauty" (2011)

I can’t remember when I first learned about the catacombs in Paris. I’m sure I saw it on television, probably one of those PBS or National Geographic type things that I’m so fond of. What I can remember is that as long as I’ve known about the catacombs, I’ve wanted to go into them. So when I started planning the things I wanted to do in Paris, seeing the catacombs were on the top of the list.

It’s a strange place, the catacombs. They occupy most of the space beneath the city, with the occasional exception of a metro line. They’ve been around since before the 13th century, in one from or another. At first, they were just around the old city walls, but over time Paris grew; the catacombs grew with it. Some of the tunnels were used as parts of a sewage system at one point, others were underground monasteries, gathering places, and more. It wasn’t until the 1800′s, when Paris was running out of space in their cemeteries, that the tunnels became a storage place for the people of France — literally.

No one knows exactly how big the catacombs really are. There are simply too many intricately woven tunnels to able to say how much space they occupy in any accurate way. But, explorers have estimated the catacombs at about 185 miles of tunnels (then add in the 1,300 miles of sewer system and 124 miles of Metro lines). Luckily, there is a renovated section of the catacombs that is open to the public. At first, I was reluctant to take a walk-through tour, as I usually prefer to go off the beaten path, but eventually decided to leave the spelunking to professionals in this case.

As I made my way through the catacombs and the over 6 million human remains interred there, I couldn’t help but be amazed. Another blogger, Joe Kissell, put it best when he described the catacombs,

“What at first appeared to be walls built of small stones were in fact huge, orderly piles of human bones. Tibias and femurs by the thousands were stacked neatly, interspersed with rows of skulls, which were sometimes arranged very artistically in a cross or other pattern. There were no intact skeletons; the goal of the arrangement had clearly been maximum compactness. I could only assume that the ribs, spines, and other bones filled in the spaces behind the walls of large leg bones. Most of the stacks of bones rose to a height of about 5 ft. (1.5m), and while some were just a couple of yards deep, there was at least one area where the bones stretched back for a good 20 yards (18m), as you could see from the narrow gap left on top. The tunnels of bones stretched on and on; many side passages were blocked with locked gates, but even the path designated for tourists was about a mile (1.5km) long.”

But as Joe notes, it’s not just the size of the catacombs that make it so impressive, it’s also the artful skill that was required to make something of this magnitude. The bones were clearly treated with care when they were arranged. Many sections of the catacombs were actually decorated with the bones that they house, like in the photo for today “Macabre Beauty.”

The photo is grainy, dark, blurry — just like the catacombs themselves. The aesthetic reminds me of old “lo-mo” photographs, and seemed fitting to it’s subject matter. I was trying to capture the beautiful simplicity in the design of the catacomb monument.