Planet Archives — Shipwrecked Images

The Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum preserves the _Archives of the Planet, a set of still and animated images, made at the beginning of the 20th century, devoted to the diversity of peoples and cultures. * * * Images at the service of the search for peace and dialogue between cultures. Stereoscopic photography, projections, cinematographs above all, this is what I would like to make large in order to fix once and for all aspects, practices and modes of human activity, the fatal disappearance of which is no more than a matter of time. Albert Kahn, January 1912 Albert Kahn is driven by an ideal of universal peace. His conviction: Knowledge of foreign cultures encourages respect and peaceful relations between peoples. He also perceives at an early stage that his time will witness the accelerated transformation of societies and the disappearance of certain lifestyles. He created the Archives of the Planet, the fruit of the work of a dozen operators sent to the field between 1909 and 1931 in order to capture the different cultural realities in some 50 countries. The ambition of the project led him to entrust his scientific direction to the geographer Jean Brunhes (1869-1930), one of the promoters in France of human geography. Two inventions of the Lumière brothers are used: cinematograph (1895) and autochrome, the first photographic process in natural color (1907). The Planet Archives gathers about 100 hours of films, 4,000 stereoscopy and 72,000 autochromes, the largest collection in the world. **Related links** Link to the general conditions of use of the funds of the Albert Kahn Departmental Museum: [CGU](https://collections.albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.fr/cms/cgu_media/)