Albert Kahn - The Archives of the Planet

 

Photographer: Albert Kahn (1860-1940)

Albert Kahn was a French banker and philanthropist, the eldest of four children of Louis Kahn, a Jewish cattle dealer and Babette Kahn (née Bloch), an uneducated homebound mother. In 1878 Kahn became a bank clerk, but studied in the evenings for a degree. He graduated in 1881, and in 1892 Kahn became a principal associate of the Goudchaux Bank, which was then regarded as one of the most important financial houses of Europe. He also promoted higher education through travelling scholarships.

Work: The Archives of the Planet

Kahn initiated the vast photographic project The Archives of the Planet after travelling to Japan on business in 1909 with his chauffeur and photographer Alfred Dutertre. With Jean Brunhes as the project director, he sent photographers to every continent to record images of the planet using state of the art autochrome plates and early cinematography.

For Kahn, photography was a way of cataloguing the human “tribes” of the world and constructing a vibrant, colourful quilt of our shared humanity.  Between 1909 and 1931 the photographers collected 72,000 colour photographs and 183,000 metres of film, forming a unique historical record of 50 countries. They documented age-old cultures on the brink of being changed forever by war, modernization, and Westernization, recording the last years of Ireland's traditional Celtic villages and the late days of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. They photographed First World War soldiers in their trenches as well as the post-war celebrations in London. In the course of their travels, they also took the earliest colour photographs in countries as varied as Vietnam and Brazil, Mongolia and Norway, Benin and the United States. For decades, the collection — which spanned everything from religious rituals to cultural customs to watershed political events — remained virtually unknown, until it was rediscovered in the 1980s.

Kahn became bankrupt during the Great Depression, spelling the end of his project. Today, the archive is housed at the Musée Albert-Kahn, located in the financier’s former garden estate in suburban Boulogne-Billancourt, just west of Paris.

References

 

Amazon.co.uk. (2016). The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn's Archives of the Planet: Amazon.co.uk: David Okuefuna: 9780691139074: Books. [online] Available at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dawn-Color-Photograph-Albert-Archives/dp/0691139075?ie=UTF8&redirect=true&tag=braipick0d-21 [Accessed 27 Jun. 2016].

Popova, M. (2012). The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn’s Catalog of Humanity. [online] Brain Pickings. Available at: https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/02/23/the-dawn-of-the-color-photograph-albert-kahn/ [Accessed 27 Jun. 2016].

Wikipedia. (2016). Albert Kahn (banker). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Kahn_(banker) [Accessed 27 Jun. 2016].

Zeiger, M. (2012). A Trip Through Time. [online] AFAR Media. Available at: http://www.afar.com/magazine/a-trip-through-time [Accessed 27 Jun. 2016].