Colour Photographs

Let us explore the ‘Archives of the Planet’, an extraordinary collection of photographs put together at the behest of banker Albert Kahn. Born in the Alsatian town of Marmoutier in 1860, Kahn moved to Paris at the age of 16. His bold speculation and investment choices would make this humble son of a cattle merchant a fortune in banking, which he would soon decide to pour into philanthropic projects. Kahn created a dozen foundations for biology, medicine and sociology between 1898 and 1909, when he started an inventory of world photography. As well as tasking camera operators across the world’s continents with compiling the ‘Archives of the Planet’, he had photographers survey the territory of France. It is thanks to this that a few colour photographs of the Tuileries and Carrousel Gardens have reached us. Alongside the immaculate flowerbeds in straight borders and round islands, you can still recognise the famous cast-iron and painted wood benches installed in the 1880s. You can also see that the two gardens changed considerably over a single hundred-year period!

Albert Kahn died in 1940, bankrupted by the 1929 economic crisis. His photography collection and his estate in Boulogne-sur-Seine were acquired by the Seine administrative department in 1936, and are now part of the Musée Départemental Albert-Kahn in Hauts-de-Seine, where a selection of the photographs is displayed opposite a recently restored garden. You can also use the museum’s online database to explore these fascinating images of a bygone world from the comfort of your own home.