These early 20th century color photos from Albert Kahn have been circulating around the web for the last couple of years, but I still find them utterly fascinating windows into the past. Maybe that’s why I like photographs so much.
EDIT: To clear things up as this photo is being circulated even more, this is the French side during World War I, probably around 1916. Also, the color process that photos in the Kahn collection used are called Autochrome Lumière. This process pre-dates color film, and though reality back 100 years ago would have been every bit as vibrant as our today is, this old photographic process captured a more muted color than photos we are used to seeing.
Why does it seem that now, all of a sudden, we’re seeing all these early color photographs show up? Not just this set, but also Russian documentary photos (from around 1910!) and Kodachrome slides from the 1930s and ’40s.
