The Wonderful World of Albert Kahn

This fascinating ten-part series tells the story of Albert Kahn's early 20th century project to document the world in cinematic and color photography and reveals the wealth of incredible images he amassed.In 1908, the French millionaire launched amonumentally ambitious initiative to create his own "Archives of the Planet" a color photographic record of human life on Earth. an internationalist and pacifist, Kahn believe that he could use the new autochrome - the world's first portable, true-colorphotographic process - to promote cross-cultural understanding and peace.Kahn's tam of photographers captured the everyday and momentous. They documented age-old cultures on the bring of being changed forever, including Ireland's traditional Celtic villages, the late days of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires and Chinese woman with their feet bound. They photographed First World War soldiers in their trenches as well as the post-war celebrations in London. And they took some of the earliestknown color photographs in countries as varied as Vietnam, Brazil, Mongolia, Norway and the United States.After being financially ruined in the Great Depression, Kahn was forced to bring his project to a premature end, but it remains a treasury ofvivid and hauntingly beautiful images and one of the world's most important photographic collections.