Werner Jean-François. (2015). The archives of the planet : the life and works of Albert Kahn. Visual Anthropology, 28 (5), p. 438-450. ISSN 0894-9468.
Titre du document
The archives of the planet : the life and works of Albert Kahn
Année de publication
2015
Type de document
Article
Auteurs
Werner Jean-François
Source
Visual Anthropology, 2015,
28 (5), p. 438-450 ISSN 0894-9468
Surrounded by a beautiful garden, the Albert Kahn museum in Paris houses the most important collection of autochromes in the world. This corpus, known as The Archives of the Planet, was created by Albert Kahn, a wealthy French banker who, during and after World War I, ran the project to collect visual documents (photographs and films) about small economic and cultural units about to disappear, in order to promote peace through a better understanding between people of different cultures. The collection of these documents was made by professional cameramen who, before going to the field, were taught basic principles of human geography as conceptualized by the French scholar Jean Brunhes. This ambitious endeavor, which came to an end in 1932 because of Albert Kahn's bankruptcy, left us with a valuable testimony about the way European elites were relating to science, visual technologies and to other dominated societies at the turn of the 20th century. In brief, the Albert Kahn Museum and the Archives of the Planet are worth a visit for both aesthetical and intellectual reasons.
Plan de classement
Anthropologie [106ANTHRO1]
;
Politiques culturelles et activités artistiques [112CULTU]
