Missions on the threshold of the East: Capturing a changing world

On the eve of the First World War, Albert Kahn launched the Archives de la Planète, an ambitious project designed to preserve the world’s cultures and territories through images. Using the earliest colour photographs, produced using the Autochrome process, his photographers travelled throughout the Balkans as far as Constantinople to document a world in the midst of profound change.

Presented in the gardens of the Villa du Temps retrouvé, this exhibition showcases a selection of exceptional images from the collections of the Albert-Kahn Departmental Museum. They reveal the transformations of a region at the heart of the political, cultural and diplomatic issues of the early 20th century. Conceived as a continuation of the exhibition The Orient Express: A Modern Epic (1883–1918), the photographs invite you to discover the landscapes and people encountered by travellers on the routes of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits.