Exhibition dates: 1st August – 2nd November 2014
Albert Kahn, Sergej M. Prokudin-Gorskii, Adolf Miethe
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Stéphane Passet (French, 1875-1941)
Morocco, Benguerir
December 1912 / January 1913
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
One of the most beautiful postings that I have ever done on the blog. The colours, the people, the faces, the places: magnificent.
This was Sarajevo two years before Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated there, catalyst that sparked the beginning of The Great War. Bread and dirty clothes, rough hands and mud-stained shoes.
Can you imagine the journey of Stéphane Passet in those days with plate cameras:
Turkey: September 1912
Morocco: December 1912 / January 1913
China: May 1913
Mongolia: July 1913
India: December 1913 – January 1914
France: June 1914
Marcus
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Many thankx to Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Stéphane Passet (French, 1875-1941)
Turkey, Istanbul
September 1912
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Stéphane François Marie Passet (French, 1875-1941) was an amateur photographer and appointed operator on behalf of the Archives de la Planète (Archives of the Planet). This archival project began thanks to the rich French-based banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn (1860-1940), who became concerned about the Chinese cultural heritage after his part-business, part-pleasure trip to China between November 1908 and May 1909.
After his return to Paris, Kahn decided to launch the worldwide project Les Archives de la Planète. This three-decade long project distinguished itself from any other initiated at that time thanks to the compilation of a visual inventory of the world utilising ground-breaking types of media from that time, namely autochrome and film. With the utopian aim to ‘fix once and for all the aspects, the practices, and modes of human activity whose fatal disappearing is just a question of time’, Kahn hired a dozen operators to help him visualise the world, including Passet.
Biographical elements of Passet remain quite meagre. What is known is that he volunteered in the French Army for fifteen years, settled down in Paris in 1910, and worked for Kahn’s Archives de la Planète from 1912 onwards. The circumstances of his previous training as a photographer and cameraman, as well as his recruitment, remain unknown. The visual archive left to us today reveal that two trips were organised [to China] in 1912 (between May and August) and 1913 (between the end of May and the end of June). Passet and his team travelled across China, visiting and recording places such as Beijing (which composes a large part of the archive in China) and northern sites (Great Wall and Ming Tombs), Shenyang, Zhangjiakou, Qufu, Shanghai, places along the Yangtze River, and Mount Tai (hereinafter referred to as Taishan).
The Archives de la Planète ended in 1931 when Kahn was bankrupted.
Anonymous text. “Stéphane Passet,” on the Photography of China website Nd [Online] Cited 10/11/2022
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Auguste Leon (French, 1857-1942)
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sarajevo
15 October 1912
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Auguste Leon (French, 1857-1942)
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sarajevo (details)
15 October 1912
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Auguste Leon (French, 1857-1942), French photographer who worked for the project “Archives of the Planet” (French: Les Archives de la Planète) of millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn (1860-1940) since 1909. Together with Jean Brin, another French photographer, they visited Macedonia during the Balkan wars in the period of 1912-1913 where they made series of autochromes (very first colour photograps) which today are in the collection of Albert Kahn museum and were published later in the publication: Macedonia in 1913 – Autochromes from the collection of the Museum Albert Kahn.
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Stéphane Passet (French, 1875-1941)
Mongolia, near Ulaanbaatar
17 July 1913
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Auguste Leon (French, 1857-1942)
Egypt, Giza
6 January 1914
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Stéphane Passet (French, 1875-1941)
India, Uttar Pradesh
19 – 21 January 1914
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Auguste Leon (French, 1857-1942)
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mostar
29 April 1913
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
The Archives of the Planet (French: Les Archives de la Planète) was photographical endeavour to document buildings and cultures.
In 1909, Kahn travelled with his chauffeur and photographer, Alfred Dutertre to Japan on business and returned with many photographs of the journey. On his return to Europe, he decided to go back, this time with the professional photographer Augustus Leon, for a second two-month trip to South America in 1909 where he visited Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. All materials became the first of the “Archives of the Planet” based in Paris: a collection of colour photographs (process autochrome plates, invented by the Lumiere brothers) and movies.
This prompted him to begin a project collecting a photographic record of the entire Earth. He appointed Jean Brunhes as the project director, and sent photographers to every continent to record images of the planet using the first colour photography, autochrome plates, and early cinematography.
Professional operators were recruited and sent around the world and in France to photograph (colour) and film (the movement) as evidence “aspects, practices and modes of human activity, including the fatal disappearance is only a matter of time.” Among them, the photographer Stéphane Passet conducted between 1912 and 1914, several trips to China, Mongolia and in the British Raj (India and Pakistan), yielding several thousand Autochromes and movies on the people and customs of these country. At the same time Kahn sent his operators, including Augustus Leon, to Scandinavia and more than twenty European countries on the eve of the Great War. Kahn’s photographers began documenting France in 1914, just days before the outbreak of World War I, and by liaising with the military managed to record both the devastation of war, and the struggle to continue everyday life and agricultural work. Other parts of France are not forgotten either, Kahn sending Brittany operators to take monochromes from 1909-1931. In 1926 and 1927, it was to Japan that he sends an operator, Roger Dumas.
Between 1909 and 1931 they collected 72,000 colour photographs and 183,000 meters of film. These form a unique historical record of 50 countries, known as The Archives of the Planet. Between 1909 and 1931, it is thus some 72,000 autochrome (first global fund of early colour photography), 4000 black-and-white, and a hundred hours of footage that will be reported from fifty country. These images are the iconographic side of a large documentation project that will take other forms (publications, documentation centres, etc.) and whose goal is a better understanding of other nations for a better deal in order to prevent conflicts. The images are also projected for this purpose to the guests, often prestigious people from around the world, as well as in higher education structures.
Translated from the French Wikipedia website
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Stéphane Passet (French, 1875-1941)
Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar
25 July 1913
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Stéphane Passet (French, 1875-1941)
India, Bombay
17 December 1913
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Stéphane Passet (French, 1875-1941)
France, Paris (Family in the Rue du Pot-de-Fer)
24 June 1914
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Auguste Leon (French, 1857-1942)
Serbia, Krusevac
29 April 1913
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Auguste Leon (French, 1857-1942)
Serbia, Krusevac (detail)
29 April 1913
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
In commemoration of the outbreak of the First World War, the Martin-Gropius-Bau is presenting an exhibition entitled The World c. 1914 – Colour Photography Before the Great War, which features nearly forgotten colour photographs and films commissioned by the French banker Albert Kahn (1860-1940) before the First World War. As the nations of Europe were already arming themselves for battle, Kahn, who was excited by the Lumière Brothers’ colour photography process, dispatched photographers out into the world to develop a unique photo archive. Over 70,000 colour photos have survived in this collection. They represent an immense ethnographic treasure and were also intended to perform a mission of peace: Bringing the outside world closer to home. Kahn’s activities were intended to help secure the fragile peace. The exhibition brings this treasure trove of images from a long forgotten world to light.
For Albert Kahn, knowledge of peoples, buildings, landscapes and lifestyles was directly related to his desire for global peace: People who know and respect one another, and who encounter one another face to face, do not need to wage war. In 1908/09, excited by the new autochrome process of the brothers August and Louis Lumière, Kahn commissioned his photographers to document the world with the goal of assembling an archive of colour photographs from Europe, Asia and Africa. They photographed local scenes and people in typical clothing as well as monuments of cultural history. From this global treasure trove, more than 160 images have been selected for this exhibition. The autochromes from the Kahn archive form the centrepiece. The exhibition also displays images and projections by Adolf Miethe (1862-1927) and Sergei M. Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944).
Adolf Miethe, the inventor of a panchromatic film-coating process and thus the creator of three-colour printing, played a significant role in the development of colour photography. His presentation before the Kaiser led to a commission to create a colour documentation of German landscapes for the St. Louis World’s Fair. His work also enjoyed great popularity as collectible pictures sold with chocolate bars. This resulted in the “Stollwerck Album” – Germany’s first coloured photographic album.
Moreover, the Miethe Process inspired the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. His work is present in the form of approximately twenty-five colour prints and fifty projected photos. A special item is on loan from the German Museum in Munich: The original projector with which Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii exhibited his work to Nicholas II, the last tsar. In 1909, as a result of this presentation, Prokudin-Gorskii received a commission to record the Russian Empire in 10,000 photos. Between 1909 and 1915, Gorskii made several thousand photographs of great brilliance. He documented the cultural diversity of the tsarist empire from the Crimean Peninsula to Siberia.
Text from the Martin-Gropius-Bau website
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Auguste Leon (French, 1857-1942)
Egypt, Assuan
20 January 1914
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Stéphane Passet (French, 1875-1941)
Morocco, Fes
January 1913
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Stéphane Passet (French, 1875-1941)
China, Beijing
26 May 1913
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Stéphane Passet (French, 1875-1941)
Turkey, Istanbul, Pera (today: Beyoğlu)
September 1912
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
Albert Kahn, Les Archives de la planète
Stéphane Passet (French, 1875-1941)
Le Moulin Rouge, Boulevard de Clichy (18°), Paris
24th June 1914
Autochrome
© Musée Albert-Kahn, Departement des Hauts-de-Seine
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