Ilse Bing began taking architectural photographs as part
of a research project for her Ph.D. dissertation in art history at the
University of Frankfurt. In the spring of 1929, she purchased one of the newly
marketed Leicas, which were made at the Leitz factory outside Frankfurt (the
name Leica combines “Leitz” and “camera”). She soon gave up her academic
studies for a career as a photographer and moved to Paris in the fall of 1930,
settling into an apartment on the Avenue du Maine in Montparnasse. This view
from above looks at the underlying geometries of the avenue, especially the
parallel lines of streetcar tracks and long shadows cast by a row of trees and
passersby. Bing said that her fundamental interest was “the apparition of
people and things” in such elusive moments when forms snap into an unexpected
harmony.