Albert Kahn (banker)

He was born Abraham Kahn in Marmoutier, Bas-Rhin, France on 3 March 1860, the eldest of four children of Louis Kahn, a Jewish cattle dealer and Babette Kahn (née Bloch), an uneducated homebound mother.

Kahn's mother died when he was ten years old, and, following the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, the Kahn family moved to Saint-Mihiel in north-eastern France in 1872 where he continued his studies at the Collège de Saverne from 1873 to 1876.

In 1879. Kahn became a bank clerk in Paris, but studied for a degree in the evenings. His tutor was Henri Bergson, who became his lifelong friend. He graduated in 1881 and continued to mix in intellectual circles, making friends with Auguste Rodin and Mathurin Méheut. In 1892 Kahn became a principal associate of the Goudchaux Bank, which was then regarded as one of the most important financial houses of Europe. He also promoted higher education through travelling scholarships.

The economic crisis of the Great Depression ruined Kahn and put an end to his project. Kahn died at Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine, France on 14 November 1940 during the Nazi occupation of France.

In 1909, Kahn travelled with his chauffeur and photographer, Alfred Dutertre, to Japan on business and returned with many photographs of the journey. This prompted him to begin a project collecting a photographic record of the entire Earth. He appointed Jean Brunhes as the project director, and sent photographers to every continent to record images of the planet using the first practical medium for colour photography, Autochrome plates, and early cinematography. Between 1909 and 1931 they collected 72,000 colour photographs and 183,000 meters of film. These form a unique historical record of 50 countries, known as The Archives of the Planet.

Kahn's photographers began documenting France in 1914, just days before the outbreak of World War I, and by liaising with the military managed to record both the devastation of war and the struggle to continue everyday life and agricultural work.

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  Paris, 1912, Eiffel tower and the Trocadero
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  Paris, 1914, Porte Saint-Denis
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  Paris, 1914, family
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  Gizeh, Egypt, 1914, the Great pyramid and the Sphinx
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  Fez, Morocco, 1913, Senegalese sniper
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  Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1912, market scene
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  Krusevac, Serbia, 1913, market scene
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  Istanbul, Turkey, 1912, wooden houses in Beyoğlu
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  Inner Mongolia, 1912
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  Mongolia, 1913, Buddhist lama
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  Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 1913, prisoner
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  Bombay, India, 1913, Sadus
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  Lahore, Pakistan, 1914, Sadu and Brahmin
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  Beijing, China, 1913, Buddhist lama