David Okuefuna, The Dawn Of The Color Photograph: Albert Kahn's Archives Of The Planet

David Okuefuna THE DAWN OF THE COLOR PHOTOGRAPH: ALBERT KAHN'S ARCHIVES OF THE PLANET

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press

Kahn used his private fortune to recruit professional photographers, supply them with trunk-loads of autochrome plates (and often ciné film cans as well) and dispatch them all over the world. During these journeys—undertaken before the creation of the long-haul transport systems we take for granted today—Kahn's photographers recorded in intimate detail the lived experiences and cultural practices of thousands of ordinary people from across the globe....

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Throughout the 1920s, Kahn’s photographers watched the peoples of Asia and the Middle East as they strode toward self-determination. ... a period that saw the destiny of the Arab world reshaped by the discovery of vast oilfields—a factor that transformed the economic and strategic position of the region overnight. . . . Further east, Kahn’s cameras recorded a nation mourning the loss of an Emperor in Japan; and the exuberant spectacle of a Maharajah’s jubilee in India.

In Asia, many of the images captured by Kahn’s photographers document a disappearing world. Across the globe, cultures and traditions were being erased by the relentless encroachment of European influence. In Africa, the Middle East and Asia, ways of life were undergoing wholesale homogenisation, as languages, religious practices and dress conventions succumbed to the imposed cultural supremacy of the colonial powers. Remarkably, more than half a century before the term was invented, Kahn was fully aware of the destructive potential of what we would now call “globalisation”: at least part of his intention was to record the vital, distinctive aspects of the world’s vulnerable cultures before they would vanish forever.