The banker and his Utopian peace mission

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Auguste Léon: Eiffel Tower with view of the the Trocadéro. Paris, July 9, 1914 Auguste Léon/Musée Albert-Kahn

Stéphane Passet: portrait of a Senegalese marksman in Fez, Morocco. January 1913 Stéphane Passet

Stéphane Passet: a group of Armenian women and girls in Istanbul, Turkey. September 1912 Stéphane Passet/Musée Albert-Kahn

Stéphane Passet: Quinyanfang (ship of amusement) in the Summer Palace, Beijing, China. June 29, 1912 Stéphane Psset/Musée Albert-Kahn

Stéphane Passet: Brahmans and sadhus in Mumbai, India. December 17, 1913 Stéphane Passet/Musée Albert-Kahn

Stéphane Passet: east gate of the northern part of the Great Wall of China with signal tower, Badaling, China. July 19, 1912 Stéphane Passet/Musée Albert-Kahn

Stéphane Passet: two soldiers with a prisoner at Mount Athos, Greece. September 10, 1913 Stéphane Passet/Musée Albert-Kahn

Stéphane Passet: probably Damdinbazar, the eighth incarnation of the Jalkhanz Khutagt ("saint incarnate"), near Ulan Bator, Mongolia. July 17, 1913 Stéphane Passet/Musée Albert-Kahn

Stéphane Passet: a high priest in ceremonial attire at the Palace of Heavenly Peace, Beijing, China. May 26, 1913 Stéphane Passet/Musée Albert-Kahn

Stéphane Passet: the Taj Mahal, Uttar Pradesh, India. January 19-21, 1914 Stéphane Passet/Musée Albert-Kahn

Auguste Léon: three women in traditional clothes, Corfu, Greece. 1913 Auguste Léon/Musée Albert-Kahn

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Albert Kahn (1860-1940) was a French banker, Jew, philanthropist, pacifist and Utopian. One hundred years ago, as the First World War was raging, he sent 20 photographers around the world to document people, landscapes and monuments. A selection of these images is now on display in Switzerland for the first time. 

By doing this, Kahn wanted to contribute to world peace. Inspired by the work of French philosopher and Nobel Prize Winner Henri-Louis Bergson (1859–1941), Kahn was convinced that a knowledge of the world’s cultures would lead to peaceful co-existence: people who know and respect each other do not wage war, was his thinking. 

The photographers crossed Europe, Asia, Africa and America, taking pictures in colour, which was a technical novelty. Their mission was to capture local scenes, relaxed everyday situations, people in their typical clothes and uniforms, street views and famous monuments. 

The result was 72,000 long-forgotten images, immortalised on glass plates, which are now celebrated as a milestone in the history of documentary photography. 

The exhibition, “World in colour – colour photography before 1915”, runs at the Museum Rietberg in Zurich until September 27, 2015. 

(Images: Musée Albert Kahn, Boulogne-Billancourt, Paris/Text: Andreas Keiser, swissinfo.ch)