The world in color
It was the dawn of an era. In the early 20th century, the Lumiere brothers came up with a revolutionary invention: color photography. Banker Albert Kahn quickly started a photo collection, his "Archives of the Planet."
New perspectives
In 1907, the Lumière brothers in France brought a revolutionary invention onto the market: color photography. Banker Albert Kahn was enthusiastic about the technology and started a photo collection, his "Archives of the Planet." The new autochrome process filtered light with tiny particles of dyed potato starch - similar to pixels found in ditigal photography. Pictured is the Eiffel Tower in 1911.
Inventor's spirit
The brothers August and Louis Lumière spent a long time working on their invention. In 1895, they had patented the first contraption for showing motion pictures, which made them world-famous. Then in 1907 they presented color photography to the world. In Germany, collectable miniature pictures were printed, depicting for example the Stollwerck chocolate factory in Cologne.
Marketing experts
The Lumière brothers weren't just inventive, they also had superb marketing skills. To get the word out about their new photo process, they sent all the important artistic photographers in Europe and the US a trial package with the tools they needed and asked them to give it a go. This newly married couple was photographed in 1910 in a Swedish atelier.
Archives of the Planet
French banker Albert Kahn - one of the wealthiest men in the world - asked his chauffeur to try out the new color photo process while he was on a business trip. Kahn was enthusiastic about the result, and in 1908 he commissioned top photographers to go out into the world and document a variety of cultures. Pictured here from 1913 are women in traditional dress on the island of Corfu in Greece.
Cultural understanding through photos
Differentiating Albert Kahn's ambitious "Archives of the Planet" project from travel photography of the time was a documentary approach that captured everyday life in a wide variety of cultures. A bread market in 1912 Sarajevo is pictured here. While the major world powers were arming themselves for World War I, cosmopolite Kahn aimed to bring knowledge of foreign cultures to Europe.
Educating with slide shows
Color photographs taken by the culturally interested were shown as slides in Kahn's home. "Albert Kahn held a salon for the Paris societée in his home and had a cinema installed," says photo historian Rolf Sachsse. With curators, Sachsse put together the current exhibition "1914 - World in Color" at the Landesmuseum in Bonn. This bridge in Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, was photographed in 1913.
Respect for minorities
The photographers who traveled across Europe to Asia were commissioned with documenting not just everyday life, but also the minority cultures in the countries they visited. "In Serbia, the Albanians were photographed, in Istanbul the Armenians and in Bosnia the Christians," explained Rolf Sachsse. Protagonists who didn't keep still appeared blurry in the photos.
Photographic adventure
The weight of the equipment meant that the photographers had to travel with carts. In addition to a tripod and the camera itself, they needed 300 to 400 glass plates per trip. These were stored in leather cases. The exposed plates were developed quickly during the night in a tent so that they wouldn't be exposed to light. Here, the photo exhibition is pictured on the Chinese border to Mongolia.
On a mission for world peace
The photographers were also asked to portray the religious leaders in the countries they visited. Pictured here in 1913 near Ulan Bator is the eighth incarnation of the Mongolian Jalkhanz Kuthugtu. The autochrome plates were later used in Paris at university lectures on "human geography." Albert Kahn financed the program as a contribution to the emerging field of social sciences.
Technical fascination
Often times, the locals - like the Sadhus and Brahmins portrayed here in India by French photo pioneers - had never seen a photographer before in their lives. "Photography was a process that was reserved for the elite classes," explained Rolf Sachsse. But a fascination with the new technology helped the locals overcome their fear of the foreigners from Europe.
Icons of color photography
Touristic motives, like the Taj Mahal in India or the Pyramids in Egypt, were also part of the photographers' assignment. In the West, only very few people had ever seen the sites, since postcards were made not with photos but with colored drawings back then. Kahn's slide shows drew large crowds in Paris. He had acquired 70,000 slides from all over the world.
End of a vision
One of the last pictures in Kahn's archive was this family in Paris, taken in 1914. With the end of Kahn's peace project came the beginning of World War I. In 1929, Albert Kahn lost his entire fortune in the stock market crash. He died poor in 1940, shortly after the Nazis had invaded his home country, France.