"Beloved Suburbs": Words and History of the Neighborhoods on Display in Paris

To "replace the periphery at the center," the tour was "obviously built with people who create and write from the suburbs," says Constance Rivière, director of the National Museum of the History of Immigration.

The exhibition tells the story of the suburbs from the mid-19th century, when Paris encompassed the villages that made up its suburbs (Passy, ​​Montmartre, Belleville, etc.) to the present day.

Already "bittersweet", the suburbs were at the dawn of the 20th century both the landscapes taken over by Impressionists like Claude Monet and the territories on the fringes of the Haussmannian development of the capital, Paris then discharging its wastewater into its suburbs.

The first observation made by the exhibition is "that the suburbs are territories under permanent construction," explains Horya Makhlouf, one of the three curators.

Jean Gabin opens the ball with an extract from the film Mélodie en sous-sol (1962): he plays a man recently released from prison who struggles to find his little house in the middle of the large housing development under construction in Sarcelles.

The shantytowns of Champigny-sur-Marne and Nanterre are followed by plans and then postcards of the large towers that residents of these new neighborhoods send to their loved ones, a sign of "the pride of accessing social housing," emphasizes Emmanuel Bellanger, a historian specializing in the social and political history of the suburbs.

"The exhibition aims to free us from an anxiety-inducing vision of the suburbs, to actually tell the story of how we could be happy in these suburban areas," comments the CNRS research director, a member of the exhibition's scientific committee.

A photo gallery of yesterday and today, "Banlieues chéries" includes numerous portraits of suburbanites and their homes to "tell many intimate stories, a lot of modesty, joyful struggles, painful struggles," explains Horya Makhlouf.

From red suburbs, the outskirts of metropolises became lands of struggle in the 1970s, faced with the crisis of deindustrialization.

The "Wall of Revolts" compiles posters, banners, and objects from demonstrations against poor housing, racism, and police violence.

Without "heroizing or romanticizing," Constance Rivière explains, the creativity and pride of suburbanites are honored, both through rap videos and through paintings or films by young artists born in the suburbs, some of whom question gentrification, the latest project underway.