One of the most consequential photographic documents of the Paris Commune, this cabinet card belongs to Appert's celebrated "Crimes de la Commune" series, which he issued in the immediate aftermath of the semaine sanglante. Appert issued "Crimes of the Commune" as a tendentious series of photographs emphasizing the criminal brutality of the rebels; although based on real events, the photographs were fabricated, with actors restaged and portraits of key Communard participants pasted atop their bodies. The imprint on the recto identifies the studio as E. Appert, Peintre Photographe, 24 Rue Taitbout, Paris, with the designation "Expert près le Tribunal de la Seine" and the notation "Reproduction interdite," confirming the image's official character and commercial protection.

The scene fills the full image area with dozens of figures: a row of hostages pressed against a tall stone garden wall at left, several identifiable as Catholic clergy in dark cassocks, while a dense crowd of armed Communard fédérés, both men and women in period dress, surge forward with rifles leveled. Trees and a low building are visible in the background, and a caption printed directly on the mount reads: "Assassinat de 62 otages Rue Haxo, 85, à Belleville / Le 26 Mai 1871, à 5 heures du Soir" ("Murder of 62 hostages, 85 Rue Haxo, in Belleville / May 26, 1871, at 5 o'clock in the evening").

The massacre at the Rue Haxo was a killing of priests and gendarmes by Communards during the semaine sanglante at the end of the Paris Commune in May 1871. On May 26, 1871, as the Commune was living its final hours, around sixty hostages were shot on the Rue Haxo, among them five Jesuits including Father Pierre Olivaint, superior of the Jesuit community on the Rue de Sèvres. The photographs in this series were later banned by the French government for "disturbing the public peace" by sustaining anti-Communard sentiments.

The reverse bears the full studio imprint of E. Appert identifying him as "Photographe du Corps Législatif," "Peintre Photographe de S.M. la Reine d'Espagne," and "de S.A.I. le Grand Duc Constantin" ("Painter Photographer to H.M. the Queen of Spain" and "to H.I.H. the Grand Duke Constantine"), along with four silver medal medallions dated 1853, 1855, 1859, and 1867. A pencil notation "£6" and an inventory notation "LOABCX / 12/24/12" appear in the upper right margin of the reverse.