Documentary series about Albert Kahn's photographic Archive of the Planet.
For a quarter of a century, Kahn supplied a team of photographers with the world's first colour camera system and dispatched them across the globe. Their films and 72,000 photographs offer a unique insight into the formative years of the 20th Century.
Ended
The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn
April 19, 2007
December 6, 2007
2
10
English
Some of the most important of all the 72,000 colour images in Kahn's Archive were shot during three separate visits (in 1908, 1912 and 1926) to Japan. As an international financier, Kahn had established a network of contacts that included some of the most prominent members of Japan's business, banking and political elites. Consequently, Kahn's photographers were granted privileged access to places that would have otherwise been off limits - including some of the royal palaces, where they shot colour portraits of the princes and princesses from Japan's Imperial family. But some of their most fascinating images capture moments from the lives of ordinary Japanese people at work and play. This film showcases Kahn's treasury of films and autochromes of silk-farmers, Shinto monks, schoolchildren, porcelain merchants, Kabuki stars and geishas - pictures that were recorded at a time when this fascinating country was going through momentous changes.
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