First photo of street riots

First photo of street riots

On June 22, 1848, the June Uprising began in Paris: workers tried to defend one of the achievements of the February Revolution — the National Workshops, which guaranteed employment for the unemployed. The authorities considered the workshops too expensive and wanted to liquidate them, and send the unemployed men into the army. Riots swept through Paris, hundreds of barricades were built in the city, protesters seized arms depots and opposed the National Guard sent to suppress the uprising. Up to 6,000 people died during the clashes.
On the third day of the uprising, early in the morning of June 25, Charles-François Thibault, a young Parisian photographer, photographed the barricades on Rue Saint-Maur using daguerreotype, a very primitive photo process in which an image is fixed on a metal plate.
On July 1, a text about the uprising was published in LIllustration magazine, accompanied by photographs of Thibault. The printing technology of the mid-19th century did not allow printing directly visible images, so they were engraved. Thibaults daguerreotypes were the first photographs used as illustrations in the press.

Previously in Old Photos: Coca and Cola, Way to Hard Labor Sakhalin.