Ulaanbaatar, one hundred years ago

Most of us know the 1900s through black and white photography. Some of us, especially children can’t imagine this era being colorful like today. The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, the Embassy of France and the Museum of Albert Kahn jointly opened an exhibition last Monday. The “Mongolia, a hundred years ago-through a French a photographer’s eye” was held at the Mongolian Modern Art Gallery, whilst “Mongolia in the years of 1912-1913” exhibition was held at the Albert Kahn’ Museum in France. More than 70 photographs were exhibited. The Mongolian lifestyle, society and people were reflected on in some of the world’s first color photographs. All photographs were taken by Stephane Passet, the French photographer. French millionaire, banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn invested in Stephane. And Stephane sent his photographs to Kahn. At this time Albert Kahn was willing to create a world archive. Stephane Passet was hired in 1912 to work on "Archives of the Planet", without knowing how, where and when it was to be formed in photography and cinematography.

The same year he was hired he was sent to China, Mongolia, Japan and Turkey. At the turn of 1912-1913, he was in Morocco. In 1913, he went back to China and Mongolia, then sailed for Greece and at the end of that year he visited India. During the Great War he served in the artillery, while working on "Archives of the Planet", he photographed in Paris in 1914 and several departments between 1915 and 1917. After the war, he left the "Archives of the Planet" for ten years. During this period, he produced at least two films in relief: The Sleeping Beauty (Parolini process) and La Damnation de Faust (process of his invention). He remained in contact with Jean Brunhesand and returned to the service of Albert Kahn and the "Archives of the Planet" in 1929 and 1930.

About Albert Kahn: 

As an idealist and an internationalist, Kahn believed that he could use the new autochrome process, the world's first user-friendly, true-color photographic system, to promote cross-cultural peace and understanding.

Kahn used his vast fortune to send a group of intrepid photographers to more than fifty countries around the world, often at crucial junctures in their history, when age-old cultures were on the brink of being changed forever, by war or the march of twentieth-century globalization. They documented in true color the collapse of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires; the last traditional Celtic villages in Ireland just a few years before they were demolished; and the soldiers of the First World War in the trenches, and as they cooked their meals and laundered their uniforms behind the lines. They took the earliest-known color photographs in countries as far apart as Vietnam and Brazil, Mongolia and Norway, Benin and the United States.

At the start of 1929 Kahn was still one of the richest men in Europe. Later that year the Wall Street Crash reduced his financial empire to rubble and in 1931 he was forced to bring his project to an end. Kahn died in 1940. His legacy, still kept at the Musee Albert-Kahn in the grounds of his estate near Paris, is now considered to be the most important collection of early color photographs in the world.

The exhibition runs to July 1.