Albert Kahn - Visionary of Culture and World Peace
Just like the first years of the 2000s delivered a global tide of technological and scientific advances, the last decades of the XIX century and the start of the XX century witnessed some of the most pivotal changes in science, technology, geography, politics, and social movements.
And while now we see them as beneficial progress, none these advances were adopted at the time without leaving a string of casualties behind.
Railways, steel bridges, dams, steamships, skyscrapers, fuel-powered engines, electricity, generators, light bulbs, factories, cars, airplanes, the telegraph, mass production - each newly adopted advance in this brief period of time replaced centuries-old traditions and customs carried out for generations.
Inevitably, these technological changes fueled the existing tidal struggles and political swings around the globe -including imperialism, nationalism, revolution, and globalization-, bringing along enduring social change.
A greater level of literacy in the population, and the development of the mechanical printing press, meant that ideas were shared and spread faster to a larger number of people - very much like internet and social media do today.
The cultural and social changes brought in by this accelerated modernity fractured the established order of things, creating ruptures in the social fabric which soon erupted into revolution and war.
An educated and worldly man of fine sensitivity, Albert Kahn was well aware of all the changes revolving around him. And while he admired the scientific and technological achievements and adopted them gladly, the accelerated pace of change also caused him concern.
He noticed that the world of his youth and his ancestors was under threat to disappear forever, replaced by modernity and westernization. But more than a mere nostalgic impulse, he was moved by an ethnographic interest.
Kahn appreciated the rich cultural diversity of the world and he wished to preserve the originality of the countryside and of every ethnic group around the globe - the genuine nature of each region, their traditions, their culture.
Moreover, Kahn firmly believed that peace and harmonious coexistence in the world could be achieved through knowledge, and the personal and direct contact among cultures.
His ideal was to bring people closer to each other, fostering cultural exchanges and communication in a respectful environment, so that each part could learn from each other, appreciate their mutual differences and thus find common agreements.
Although he may seem hopelessly idealistic to our eyes, Kahn’s views were rooted in his upbringing and in the vicissitudes he had to endure from childhood.
Albert Kahn was born Abraham Kahn in 1860, at the heart of a cattle merchant Jewish family settled in Alsace. By the time he was ten, his mother died, and that same year the Franco-Prussian war began. By the end of the conflict, Alsace was annexed to Germany.
Unwilling to become German, the Kahn family moved to north-eastern France in 1872, and Abraham changed his name to Albert.
After finishing his studies, Albert moved to Paris and became a bank clerk, studying at nights for a higher degree. After his graduation in 1881, he continued to work in banking, ascending the echelons of the firm while cultivating cultural connections that satisfied his intellectual interests.
By 1892, at the age of 32 and through a mix of sheer hard work, financial savvy, and good fortune, Kahn became the principal associate of one of the most important financial houses in Europe, the Goudchaux Bank. In addition to this, he is said to have forged a large fortune through his actions in diamond mines in South Africa.
But Kahn was unlike most bankers, and he decided to devote much of his wealth to make the world a better place.
In 1893, he began to buy several lots of land in the Bolougne-Billancourt area -Paris periphery- and aside from establishing his residency there, he began the creation of what, over the years, became the Gardens of the World.
With usual global mindset, Kanh divided the terrain so as to create different gardens with a variety of botanical species, evoking different regions of the world.
Thus, in addition to isolated species representing the middle East, India, and South America, the grounds included a full Japanese garden complete with a stream, bridge, and tea house, an English garden, a French garden, a rose garden, and an impressive evergreens forest, resembling the nature of Kahn’s native Alsace.
The garden was almost Kahn’s wordless statement to prove that the world’s diversity could coexist and interact peacefully and harmoniously in one single place.
In addition to the gardens, Kahn installed in his estate a conservatory, a projection room, a garage, a photo studio, and printing press, where he would create special cultural Bulletins shared with friends and acquaintances.
In this environment, Kahn invited over the social, cultural, artistic, religious, scientific, and political elite of the time, including ambassadors and Nobel Prize winners, in order to meet and exchange ideas, mingling in diners, conferences, readings, exhibits, and film screenings.
Kahn was decided to prove his theory that harmony and mutual understanding could be achieved through knowledge and personal communication.
But Kahn’s passion for the advancement of science and knowledge didn’t end with these. He financed the first center of preventive medicine, the first laboratory of biological imagery, and funded numerous university foundations.
In 1898, Kahn also established a Travel Scholarship at the University of Paris, the Burse au tour du monde. The innovative award was available for both men and women (a novelty at the time), either French or foreign, allowing the student and future professor, to travel to a global destination with all expenses paid for a full year. In exchange, Kahn only required to receive a detailed travel report.
The goal of this Scholarship was to foster international cultural exchange, impregnating the recipient with a foreign culture, personally experiencing other ways of living and thinking, so as to transfer these into their teachings and thus foster better global understanding.
Kahn had noticed that most teachers went straight from University into the classroom, too young and without life experiences. He firmly believed that by exposing them to new experiences, new cultures and environments, they would become better teachers.
Hundreds benefited from Kahn’s scholarship, and we can’t know for sure how many children took advantage of their teachers’ experiences abroad.
However, despite Kah's efforts, the socio-political tensions around the world continued escalating.
Albert Kahn (far right) in China, 1908.In 1908, Kahn embarked along a friend and his chauffeur, Alfred Dueterte, on a Journey Around the World, in the fashion of Jules Verne. The trip started in France and visited New York, Niagara, Chicago, San Francisco, Honolulu, Japan, Shanghai and Peking.
During the voyage, Kahn used Dueterte’s ability with the car handle to operate a filming camera, also taking stereoscopic pictures and sound recordings of the places they visited using wax rolls.
Back in France, Kahn shared his collected souvenirs with friends and acquaintances, and slowly a project began to form in his mind. Photography could be the perfect means to preserve the people and places of the world that was quickly crumbling.
However, Kahn decided that black and white images failed to transmit the full beauty and richness of each place.
Thus, despite their steep cost, he turned to two recent inventions from the Lumiére brothers: Autochromes -the very first industrial technique for color photographs, patented in 1907- and film cameras.
Armed with these state-of-the-art equipment, and after a quick training of the intricacies of film making and processing, in 1910 Kahn’s photographers were sent out to capture the world as it was, in order to preserve it for posterity.
The Archives of the Planet project was born.
In order to provide this endeavor with the required scientific credibility, Kahn appointed geographer Jean Bruhnes as project director, and sent a dozen photographers (called operators) to more that fifty locations throughout the planet, to document the life and culture of each: the people, their typical costumes, the architecture, the landscape.
Unlike most photography done at the time, the concept behind Archives of the Planet was not to achieve idealized images, but to capture the world exactly as it was - show its normal day-to-day, and the very essence that made each location and culture different and special.
For this reason, many of the images contained in the archive may seem bland to our eyes, even amateurish. However, their value resides in their sheer honesty, encapsulating the originality of a time and place just as it was before disappearing.
Jean Bruhnes infused the project with scientific rigor, posing specific requests to the camera operators who tried to comply with them to the best of their abilities.
However, with the onset of the Great War in 1914, the budding project had to pause. But Kahn’s passion for documentation remained.
He managed to work alongside the French military, capturing intimate portraits of everyday life during wartime in France, and the people's struggle to survive.
After the war, the Archives of the Planet project resumed, documenting the changes brought by the conflict.
Japan, Sweden, Norway, Russia, China, Mongolia, Siam, Turkey, Palestine, Greece, Egypt, Mexico, Canada, the United States...Kahn’s photographers traveled to all five continents engrossing the visual archive with images of peoples, cultures, and places never seen before.
Back in France, Kahn organized cultural meeting in his residence, showcasing the astounding color pictures of far, exotic places, spreading his vision that cultural approximation and exchange could bridge all human differences.
Unfortunately, the Great Depression of 1929 defied even Kahn’s financial expertise, and within a couple of years he was bankrupt.
The Archives of the Planet project had to be terminated.
The cultural meetings, the visits of high society, the social gatherings - they all ceased abruptly.
Besieged by debts, Kahn was forced to sell his art collection, his sculptures, his furniture. Little by little his estate was diminished, and even his own residence was put on lease. Kahn remained there, though, living in one room.
Although his property and the surrounding gardens were expropriated, Kahn reached to an agreement with the mayor and was allowed to remain in his home and take walks in the gardens, now property of the State.
Albert Kahn died there in 1940, still hoping to rebuild his fortune and travel once again around the world.
But his legacy lived on in the Archives of the Planet, an incomparable project.
After more than 22 years of travels, the Archive collected 40,000 black and white captures, 72,000 known color photographic plates - the largest collection of Autochrome photographs in the world-, and 183,000 meters of film, for over 120 projection hours documenting life in five continents.
But beyond the impressive numbers, Kahn’s documentation project is invaluable in its scientific and historical achievement of preserving a vanishing world for posterity, and as an archival of human geography.
The Archives of the Planet achieved thus Kahn’s goals to preserve the vanishing world at the Turn of the Century, and spread cultural knowledge through image and film.
Today, we take international travel and globalization for granted. Western culture can be found all around the world and, after seeing them in countless pictures, videos, films, and documentaries, no location on Earth seems too foreign or exotic in our eyes.
Student trips abroad and cultural exchanges are common, its benefits having been proven for decades. The world never was smaller or more connected.
A world eons away from Albert Kahn’s, yet a true heir to his vision.
Much has been speculated about Kahn’s reasons for the extravagant use of his fortune. Some point to some secret remorse for belonging to the “oppressive class” by being a Banker. Others see it as only the generous actions borne from his humanitarian nature.
Over a century after the eccentric Travel Scholarship and the Archives of the Planet projects started, we can affirm with conviction that the world is a better place thanks to the vision and philanthropic entrepreneurship of Albert Kahn.
* After years of painstaking digitalization, the entire collection of Autochromes from Archives of the Planet is available to the public. In its official website (only in French) you can browse them by subject, location, photographer, and even download them for non-commercial use.
https://collections.albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.fr/?page=accueil
* Curious about Albert Kahn’s films? You can view many of them here (In French only):
https://www.dailymotion.com/collections-albert-kahn/videos
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Sources: Francecultures.fr, Musée Albert Kahn, Collections Albert Kahn, Museemagazine.com, L’insaisissable Albert Kahn, Francetvinfo.fr.
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