marks the inception of‘les archives de la planète’by shaping its conceptualization.
After this trip, Kahn decided to create an archive of the planet as an”inventory
of the surface of the globe inhabited and developed by man as it presents itself
at the start of theth century in order tofix once and for allthe practices, the
aspects and the modes of human activity, whose fatal disappearance is only a
question oftime”(my emphasis).He appointed Jean Brunhes, an important
researcher in the developing discipline of cultural geography, as the director of
the archive, and betweenand, Kahn financed cameramen who tra-
velled to more thancountries around the world to make this inventory.
When the collection process finally came to an end, due to Albert Kahn’s
bankruptcy in the wake of the stock market crash, it comprised,auto-
chromes (a new color photography process on glass plates invented by Louis
Lumière in),,meters of film (overhours of projection) and
stereographs.There are also someblack-and-white photographs, but their
role in the archive appears to be secondary in comparison to the other technolo-
gies used. A small part of the film footage was acquired from newsreel compa-
nies, and was not shot by the Kahn cameramen. The archive was kept intact
after Kahn’s bankruptcy and even survived the occupation of France shortly
after Kahn’s death in, probably because it was considered to be of little or
no financial value. Almost all of the film material is stored as unedited shots, as
it was never exploited commercially, and only small parts of the material were
ever spliced together for use in Jean Brunhes’courses at the Collège de France.
As to the question of who was the“director”of these films and photographs,
we have to think in terms other than the traditional hierarchies of director, pro-
ducer and cameraman in the film industry. Kahn was only present at the shoot-
ing during his trip around the world and on the shots that took place in his
mansion and his garden in Boulogne on the outskirts of Paris. He did, however,
appoint Jean Brunhes as director because he understood the project as con-
nected to the emerging discipline of cultural geography. Kahn maintained an
important role in the decision-making process regarding whom to hire as cam-
eramen and he had the final say in where to send them. Kahn’s role clearly
exceeded that of instigator and financial backer of the enterprise. The many dig-
nitaries invited to Kahn’s home were filmed and photographed, and it seems
that the decisions about which people and which geographical places should be
included in the archive were largely his. There is little evidence of what orders
were given to the cameramen and by whom, but it remains clear that the images
from different places look stylistically coherent and similar in framing, distance,
etc. These decisions were probably made in collaborations between Kahn,
Brunhes and the experienced cameramen they hired, and the stylistic unity of
the material makes it evident that there were directions given to the cameramen
to secure a certain homogeneity in the framing, camera movements and the dis-
208 Trond Lundemo