Boerderij in Le Hameau de la Reine bij het Petit Trianon 1860 - 1880

Ernest Eléonor Pierre Lamy created this stereo card image of the farm in Le Hameau de la Reine near the Petit Trianon, which offers insight into 19th-century European aristocratic life. These artificial, idealized farms—a playground for Marie Antoinette and her court—speak volumes about the vast social and economic disparities of the time. The Hameau, with its faux rural aesthetics, allowed the aristocracy to play at being peasants, a romanticized and utterly detached engagement with the realities of agricultural labor and poverty experienced by the majority of the population. Lamy’s photograph captures this constructed reality, framing the farm as a picturesque idyll, a stark contrast to the actual conditions of rural life for many in France. The image invites us to consider the performance of identity and the ways in which power and privilege are visually and spatially reinforced. It is a glimpse into a world where fantasy and reality were deliberately blurred, a reflection of the deep-seated inequalities that would eventually fuel revolutionary fervor.