A street-level view of the Rue du Bac looking toward devastated building facades dominates this albumen silver print carte de visite, capturing the aftermath of the Paris Commune's suppression in May 1871. The Commune was established in March 1871 and bloodily suppressed by French troops in May of that year. The photograph was made by Ernest Ladrey, a French photographer active from 1860 to 1889 with a studio in Paris situated in the Passage des Princes, between the Boulevard des Italiens and the Rue de Richelieu.

The image presents collapsed and gutted building fronts along the right side of the street, their upper stories sheared away to expose interior walls, window openings, and bare chimney stacks above. A massive rubble pile of cut stone blocks fills the right foreground, stacked in rough courses that spill into the wet cobblestone roadway. At least three motion-blurred pedestrian figures stand or move near the center of the street, dwarfed by the scale of the destruction. On the left, an intact shopfront bearing a partially legible sign occupies the first building, underscoring the selective nature of the damage along the block.

The suppression of the Commune resulted in extensive damage to the city, as the communards set fire to multiple landmarks and desperate fighting between opposing forces destroyed or damaged many structures throughout Paris. Ladrey was awarded a silver medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1867, and his studio was among those that documented the city's ruins in the immediate aftermath, producing views that stand today as primary visual records of one of the nineteenth century's most consequential urban upheavals.

The reverse bears the printed studio imprint of Ernest Ladrey, Passage des Princes, Escalier E, Boulevard des Italiens 5bis, Rue Richelieu 97, Paris, with the printed legend "Les Clichés sont conservés / Il suffit d'écrire" (The negatives are preserved / Simply write to order). Inscribed in ink at the top: "Rue du Bac." A catalog notation in pencil reads "3/24/14 LOBCE2."