In 1909, the banker, pacifist and idealist, Albert Kahn, was one of the richest people in Europe. At that time, he decided to create a photo archive of and for the people around the globe. Kahn hired a group of young photographers and outfitted them with Autochrome cameras, sending them to various countries where he had them take pictures of regular people and the world as it was. The Autochrome, invented by the Lumiere brothers in 1907, was the first commercially available camera system that enabled the photographers to take true color pictures.
The Kahn Collection numbers more than 7,000 photographs and 100 hours of film, much of which can be seen in the 5 Episodes of the documentary series “Edwardians in Colour: The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn”, 2007. This series explores the birth of colour photography and captures the Edwardian world, globally, in stunning images, both still and moving.