The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn's Archives of the Planet
In 1909 the French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn launched a monumentally ambitious project: to produce a color photographic record of human life on Earth. An internationalist and pacifist, Kahn believed that he could use the new autochrome--the world's first portable, true-color photographic process--to create a global photographic archive that would promote cross-cultural understanding and peace. Over the next twenty years, he sent a group of photographers to more than fifty countries around the world, amassing more than 72,000 images. Until recently his collection was all but forgotten. Now, a century after he began his "Archives of the Planet" project, this book--richly illustrated in color throughout--and the BBC series it follows are bringing Kahn's dazzling early twentieth-century pictures to a wide audience for the first time, and putting color into what we usually think of as a monochrome world.
Kahn's photographers captured times, places, and people we simply do not expect to see in color photographs. They documented age-old cultures on the brink of being changed forever by war, modernization, and Westernization, recording the last years of Ireland's traditional Celtic villages and the late days of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. They photographed First World War soldiers in their trenches as well as the postwar celebrations in London. In the course of their travels, they also took the earliest color photographs in countries as varied as Vietnam and Brazil, Mongolia and Norway, Benin and the United States.
After being financially ruined in the Great Depression, Kahn was forced to bring his project to a premature end, but today his collection of early color photographs is recognized as one of the world's most important. The Dawn of the Color Photograph makes it easy to see why.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
You'll see priceless photographs of a world in transition, including haunting shots from the poverty-stricken farms of Ireland and the battlefield trenches of the First World War. The images are fascinating, both from a historical and an artistic perspective. And one of the great things about this book is that author David Okuefuna provides enough information to help you understand how the images were taken and also their historical context. . . . The pictures featured in this book are stunning and offer a unique view of world history and also the beginnings of color photography.
(Nicole Warburton Deseret Morning News )
The collection boasts what may be the earliest color photographs of the Taj Mahal and the Egyptian pyramids, as well as striking portraits of Kurdish women in northern Iraq, dancers from the Khmer ballet in Angkor, and itinerant Mongolian hunters on the steppes near the Russian border. But does the past change when we see it in color? In many instances, the vivid palette brings the images closer to our present moment, making the world--and the distance of history--frighteningly small.
(Nicole Rudick Bookforum )
The pictures [are] full of the fascination of all old photodocumentation, heightened by color more sensual than later color processes deliver without tweaking. Accompanied by a direct, nontechnical text and complementing a BBC-TV series, this is a world-history buff's delight.
(Ray Olson Booklist )
Autochrome technology was taken up by French philanthropist Albert Kahn, who sent photographers all over the world to record in color the panoply of human cultures, all in the interest of mutual understanding and peace. The results of Kahn's generosity are on display in The Dawn of the Color Photograph, and they amount to a massive collage of the early decades of the 20th century, a time.
(Dennis Drabelle Washington Post Book World )
This fascinating book includes mostly posed groups of farmers, workers and artisans from Western Europe, the Americas, the Far East, Africa and Indochina.
(Regan McMahon San Francisco Chronicle )
When the Lumière brothers invented colour photography in 1907, one of their countrymen immediately saw in it the possibility of promoting cross-cultural understanding. Albert Kahn, a banker and pacifist from Paris, dispatched photographers around the globe to document the people they found. For the next 20 years, they immortalized Germans, Montenegrins, Egyptians, Mongolians and every other manner of global citizen. This isn't a book about photography; it's a pictorial history of the colour-saturated world that existed before we all started wearing blue jeans and Nike T-shirts.
(The Globe and Mail )
Most of us would think that photos of a trip around the world made in 1908 couldn't possibly have been taken in colour, but they were. This book gives a fascinating look at some of the beautiful 72,000 colour images, which are accompanied in the archives by 4,000 black and white photographs and 120 hours of rare documentary film footage, all housed in the Musee Albert-Kahn in a Parisian suburbs.
(Nancy Tousley Calgary Herald )
Amazing, filled with color photographs shot from about 1909 to 1929. French banker Albert Kahn sent a team of photographers to shoot pictures in autochrome, the first portable color photographic process around the globe. Blue sails, red cloaks, yellow flowers: The hues are astonishing, and so are the glimpses of a vanished world.
(Sarah Bryan Miller St. Louis Post-Dispatch )
A beautifully illustrated book. . . . The Dawn of the Color Photograph is a handsome document full of lush and memorable images. Most of us still picture 1909 exclusively in black and white, so it's a revelation to peer back 100 years and see such eerily bright hues.
(Dushko Petrovich The Boston Globe )
The photographs, hundreds of which are compiled in the new book, are breathtaking. . . . [An] extraordinary volume. . . . Countless beautiful images of now-lost worlds to enthrall us and remind us where we came from.
(uel Laneri, Forbes.com )
To celebrate a century of the little-known collection, Princeton University Press has issued an impressive new monograph, The Dawn of the Color Photograph: Albert Kahn's Archives of the Planet. . . . The new book is the first widely available collection to reproduce Kahn's photographs from every region of the world.
(k Cohen, Nextbook.org )
Review
An astonishing, captivating, and extraordinary collection of early color photographs.
(Anthony W. Lee, Mount Holyoke College )
From the Inside Flap
"An astonishing, captivating, and extraordinary collection of early color photographs."--Anthony W. Lee, Mount Holyoke College
Praise for the television series: "Astonishing images."--Time Out
Praise for the television series: "A fascinating and vivid celebration of the earliest examples of colour photography."--Gareth McLean, Guardian
Praise for the television series: "A legacy of inestimable richness."--Benjamin Secher, Daily Telegraph
Customer Reviews
A Color World Before Globalization 
When color photography was created in 1907 by the Lumière brothers in France, philanthropist Albert Khan assigned photographers to travel the world documenting the many peoples they found, using the new technology. More than 72,000 pictures resulted, and "The Dawn of the Color Photograph" is a sampling of them. These don't just focus on the exotic cultures from the reaches of civilization, but Europeans, Americans, and the battlefields of WWI. Those exotic cultures are also well represented, when native dress was day to day wear, and not something worn for tourists. This is also well before globalization, so there are no modern distractions in the background, no Micky Mouse T-shirts, McDonalds, or Starbucks. This book is a supplement to a BBC TV program of the same name, but is extremely stand-alone. A prefect book for photography or history buffs and being a nice sweet spot for those that are both.
good overview
This book draws on the same material and uses many of the images contained in the BBC documentary on Kahn. It is well laid out, contains useful - but not exhaustive - commentary on the images selected. It is very well produced in terms of quality of paper, reproduction and binding
Valuble contribution to the photographic history
I have some books illustrated by old Autochrome color photographs, but this book ist well printed (not too brillant in the colors) and contains a lot of rare pictures throughout the world including World War I.
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