The World c. 1914

Colour Photography Before the Great War

Léon Busy, Hans Hildenbrand, Auguste Léon, Marguerite Mespoulet, Adolf Miethe, Stéphane Passet, Sergei Mikailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

This exhibition is devoted to the almost forgotten colour photographs and films made before the First World War that were commissioned by French banker Albert Kahn. Inspired by the colour photography of the Lumière brothers, he issued these commissions – at a time when the nations of Europe were already arming for the Great War – to photographers in order to build up the Archives de la planète with colour photos from all over the world. The 70,000 colour shots that have been preserved constitute an immense treasure and were also intended to perform a peace mission by bringing strangers closer to one another.