Merci beaucoup, Albert Kahn

Long before the convenience of high speed Kodachrome colour film, and even before hand-tinting black-and-white images became a thing, the Lumière Brothers (of motion picture fame) created an ingenious colour photography process called Autochrome.

Based on glass plates coated in specially dyed potato starch grains behind a conventional silver emulsion, Autochrome Lumière was patented in 1903 and remained the pre-eminent colour process until Kodachrome arrived in the 1930s. It was, however, slow and rather cumbersome, which is why monochromatic images dominate most archives.

Archives of the Planet

The glaring exception to that dominance is, of course, the Albert Kahn Collection, held by the Musée Albert-Kahn in the Boulogne-Billancourt district of Paris, France.

Kahn himself (March 3rd, 1860 – November 14th, 1940) was a successful banker and enthusiastic photographer* who conceived a monumental Autochrome collection after a business trip to Japan in  1909.

[ *and not to be confused with the noted Detroit architect Albert Kahn (1869—1942) ]

Named Les Archives de la Planète (The Archives of the Planet) he set out to create a photographic collection showing life on every continent on Earth.

With Kahn’s backing, a number of photographers carried their heavy equipment around the world for 22 years, accumulating 72,000 colour photos and over metres of film covering every aspect of everyday life. Happily for us, that included a number of aviation subjects.

Studies of life in France itself began at the end of July 1914, just days before the General Mobilisation that opened World War One – giving Les Archives a critical role in the conflict’s visual record.

Kahn’s legacy

Kahn, unfortunately, lost his wealth in the global crash of 1929. But his far-flung photography project took until 1931 to finally wind down.

Having fled the Prussian invasion of France in 1870 as a 10 year old boy, Albert Kahn died at his Paris home 70 years later, six months into a new German occupation of France. Heaven knows what he made of that.

His extraordinary colour collection is now curated and exhibited by the dedicated Albert Kahn Museum, which adjoins his beautiful Jardins du Monde (Gardens of the World).

The lion’s share of the photographic archive – over 60,000 images – is searchable and viewable online, and the files are freely available for personal and educational use. Knowing a little French is handy, but if you scroll down to the map and search feature it’s all fairly international.

Fittingly, Boulogne-Billancourt sits between Issy-les-Moulineaux and the Hippodrome de Longchamp – two sites that were used extensively by France’s earliest aviation pioneers, including Bleriot, Voisin, Santos-Dumont and others. And Kahn’s photographers couldn’t ignore the growing art/science/weapon of aviation that was conquering the world around them…

 

Aviation’s earliest colour

Caudrons for China

René and Gaston Caudron (in blue) introduce Chinese officials to their Caudron Type F, during a French mission to Beijing between May 25th and June 27th, 1913. The Chinese government bought 12 of the single seaters.

1913 Paris Salon

December 1913 was, once again, time for the annual Salon de l’Aéronautique in Paris. The annual Salon had grown out of the Motor Salon since 1909, and rapidly became the definitive showcase for aircraft manufacturers and all their latest ideas. It would evolve into the biennial Paris Air Show, now the world’s largest.

In their coverage of the 1913 Salon, Flight magazine bemoaned the scarcity of exhibitors and the lack of innovative ideas compared to previous years – but the majors were all there, including Bleriot, Caudron, Bristol, Nieuport, and more; plus engine, balloon and hydroplane makers.

The following years’ Salons were cancelled through World War One, although aviation’s development was anything but curtailed…

1916 Shorthorns

The museum’s data doesn’t say, but this looks to me like a Maurice-Farman MF.11 Shorthorn with extra short skids. It is certainly a French Aéronautique Militaire craft, photographed near Amiens in 1916, making it most likely a training or communications plane, which would also explain the absence of guns.

Another Shorthorn (I think!) at the same field near Amiens in 1916 – but this one sports a rather lethal-looking arrangement of machine guns in a specially built turret. Note the crossed bombs on the ground too – making me think this craft was possibly used for ground attack, and that the turret is probably armoured.

Nieuport escadrille

A French Nieuport 23 C.1 squadron at Soissons on the Aisne in Northeastern France, on May 27th 1917.

The 23 C.1 was a variation on the immensely successful Nieuport 17, featuring a new interruptor gear that meant the Vickers gun had to be mounted left of the centreline. These photos were taken shortly after the disastrous 2nd Battle of the Aisne in which some 120,000 French casualties over 30 days triggered a soldiers’ mutiny.

Captured eagles

This fascinating set of images shows captured German fighters, which were displayed in the Jardin des Tuileries, Paris (along with guns, vehicles and even an observation balloon) for the long-suffering French public to see.

Interestingly, these photos weren’t taken after the November 1918 Armistice as you might have thought; they date from October 1918. In other words these frontline Fokker and Albatros types were all taken during the fighting – albeit the final German retreat.

Return of the Paris Salons

In December 1919, the French reinstated their Salon de l’Aéronautique in the Grand Palais, Paris. This sixth Salon picked up where the five pre-war Salons (1909 through 1913) had left off, and would continue biennially until the Second World War.

Some great and long-forgotten names of aviation were represented at the 1919 exhibition and, just one year on from the Great War, there is an amazingly clear and strong  vision of aviation’s commercial potential.

Orly hangars constructed…

The two huge Orly Airport airship hangars seen under construction in August 1923. (Work began in 1921 and was completed in 1924.)

Designed by the great engineer Eugene Freyssinet using his revolutionary concrete shell construction method – corrugated formers providing a stiff, light mould for the poured concrete – the hangars were each 75 metres wide inside, and 144 metres long. Their elegant parabolic arch became the de facto shape for large airship hangars around the world.

The biplane looks like our old friend the Nieuport 17 – or one of its many derivatives – sold into civilian hands… Any input would be appreciated.

…and Destroyed

The destruction at Orly airport after the 306th BG, US 8th Air Force, visited with a force of 90 B-17s on May 20th, 1944 (Mission #359). The remains of Freyssinet’s enormous concrete hangars are plainly visible in the lower left quadrant.

Costes and Bellonte

On September 2nd, 1930, French aviators Dieudonné Costes (1892 – 1973) and Maurice Bellonte (1896 – 1983) smashed a significant aviation barrier by crossing the Atlantic against the prevailing winds – flying westwards from Paris to New York. The 6,000 km flight took over 37 hours in a specially modified Breguet XIX light bomber dubbed Point d’interrogation – yep, ‘the Question Mark’ – and had only been accomplished by airships until then.

Costes, who was also an 8-victory WW1 ace, had already been first to cross the South Atlantic non-stop, flying from Senegal to Brazil in another Br.19 in October 1927.

After the New York flight, Costes and Bellonte returned to France, arriving at Le Bourget Airport, Paris, on October 25th when these Autochrome images were made.