This collection of more than 42,000 original photos, plus 6,000 photographic postcards and more than 2,000 photographic engravings and collotypes which visually records a century of French colonial involvement in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos is probably the largest such collection in private or institutional hands. The period covered is 1845-1955.
The collection includes priceless photographs taken in Vietnam - two daguerreotypes in 1845 by the Frenchman, Jules Itier. There are also some 229 albums of views and portraits containing around 22,000 photographs. Individual prints of portraits and views total more than 3,000; some 180 cartes de visite and 49 cabinet photos; around 120 glass lantern slides; more than 100 stereo photos; 6,000 photographic postcards AND MANY OTHER ITEMS.
Amongst others, work by the following VIETNAMESE photographers is depicted: Huong Ky, Khanh-Ky, Nghiem Xuan Thuc, Tang Vinh, Vo An Ninh and Vo Chuan. FRENCH & FOREIGN photographers are represented by: Mme Ary-Jouanne, Emile Berranger, Léon Busy, Ludovic Crespin, Pierre Dieulefils, Paul Gastaldy, Clément Gillet, Émile Gsell, Charles-Édouard Hocquard (who photographed the 1884-5 Sino/French War), Michel Huet, Jules Le Bas, Raphael Moreau, Fernand Nadal, Aurélien Pestel, Jacques-Philippe Potteau, Pun Lun, August Sachtler, Antoine Eugène Salin, F. H. Schneider, René Tetart, John Thomson, Pierre Verger and many others.
There are numerous portraits of the members of the Royal Families, including a collection showing the 1863 Vietnamese Embassy to France. The photographs and related ephemera (including correspondence between royalty and French colonial governors and senior officers) in some cases come from the family archives of important figures such as: Jules Bosc (Resident Superior, Laos 1918-1931), Pere Rene Detry (Missionary for the Missions Etrangeres albert sarraue Paris, based in Indochina 1930-1957), Maurice Graffeuil (Resident Superior, Annam 1934-1941), Jean Moura (Chief Administrator, Cambodia 1868-1879), Marcel Ner (French philosophy teacher, writer, educationalist, ethnologist, and supporter of Vietnam's claims for independence, 1930s), Armand Rousseau (Governor General Indochina 1895-1896), Albert Sarraut (Governor General Indochina 1911-1914 & 1917-1919), and Van Oest (Parisian Publishers 1930s-1940s).
