The series “Corbeilles de Paris” by Munich artist and photographer Ivan Baschang documents the historical – and long overlooked – iron baskets of Parisian street furniture, which have nowadays been replaced by modern garbage cans.
As early as the 19th century, Napoleon III sought to integrate nature into the city: In addition to the creation of numerous parks and green spaces, public amenities were also adapted to the prevailing natural forms.
In 1908, Denise Rodriguez-Thomé documented the installation of the first wastepaper basket (“corbeille à papier”) at the Place de l’Opéra in Paris.
The iron “Corbeille Tulipe,” the “tulip basket,” was also designed shortly afterward, following the end of the First World War: It blends elements of the emerging Art Déco style with references to the organic forms of the Napoleonic era, which still largely characterized the Parisian cityscape.
The Tulip Basket, with its appearance, formally and culturally marked the upheavals brought about by the First World War.
During the industrialization of the 19th and 20th centuries, which drove increasing numbers of people into the cities, the wastebasket became ever more necessary for promoting cleanliness in public spaces. After years of sporadically installed wastebaskets, the systematic placement of the “Corbeille Tulipe” in all green spaces in Paris was officially approved in 1976.
From the mid-1990s onward and intensified by heightened security measures following bombings in the Paris Metro, the use of the iron basket was gradually replaced by the emerging plastic bag.
In 2004, Ivan Baschang began his series entitled “Corbeilles de Paris” (Paris Baskets) – more out of a hunch than a certainty that he had found an object threatened with complete extinction. The archival collection of iron baskets as such was part of it, as was the unique photographic documentation and search for the last remaining examples of the Tulipe model.
Baschang thus preserves what will no longer exist in the foreseeable future. In this seemingly inconspicuous detail of Parisian architecture, a history of industrialization, politics, and urban planning unfolds.
