The Twenties In Colour

Between 1914 and 1928, Kahn sent some of his most talented photographers to the Far East. In Cambodia, Vietnam and Japan, they produced a compelling photographic record of economic and cultural life, subsistence industries, and ceremonial practices, and produced a fascinating portrait of the life of a wealthy Maharajah in India during the British Raj.

The First World War led to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and its former provinces came under the control of France and Britain. Though as the occupying troops arrived, the people of present-day Syria, Lebanon and Palestine were already entertaining hopes that they would be able to govern themselves. Albert Kahn's cameras were there to record the establishment of new nations.

When the Armistice was signed in November 1918, Kahn's team photographed the scenes of jubilation in Paris as they witnessed the negotiations at the Paris Peace Conference and recorded the horrifying aftermath of four years of war and the upheaval that followed war in the Rhineland and Turkey.