Paris on the Eve of Bastille day in 1965

This post, from the Snapshots in time series, features photos which were all taken on the Eve of Bastille day in Paris on 13th July 1965.

Background to the pictures

Although the photos are all Ferrania colour slides, which don’t have the processing date printed on the slide frame, I can be sure of the date because of the means by which I came by the slides. Instead of purchasing these images as I normally do, this set of slides were donated to me by a visitor to the site who remembers the pictures being taken on the day before Bastille Day when he was a small boy.

The only other context I could find relating to the photos was a film which was shot taken on Bastille day 1965, the day after these pictures were taken. The film is in black & white, but there is a scene of the Champs Elysée where the flags shown in the images can be seen decorating the streets of Paris.

Pictures from Paris preparing for Bastille Day 1965

The pictures cover a variety of different locations on Paris and have retained their colour and contrast remarkably well. Normally, I would expect only Kodachrome slides to be this well-preserved, but these pictures show that possibly the storage of the slides will have an impact on the quality as well.

If you enjoy these pictures, you may find this 8mm home movie, which was taken only a few years later in 1969 in Paris, interesting as well.