Collection of Early Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Guangzhouwan Photographs

This collection of more than 40,000 original photographs and photographic publications—plus 5,000 photographic postcards and over 2,000 photographic engravings and collotypes—visually records a century of French colonial involvement in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Guangzhouwan. Covering 1845 to 1955, it is likely the largest collection of its kind in private or institutional hands. The collection includes priceless photographs taken in Vietnam, most notably two 1845 daguerreotypes by French photographer Jules Itier. It features approximately 247 albums of views and portraits containing around 24,000 photographs. Individual portraits and views total more than 3,000. The archive also includes 180 cartes de visite, 49 cabinet photos, roughly 120 glass lantern slides, more than 100 stereo photos, and numerous other items. Among these are many portraits of royal family members and a rare series documenting the 1863 Vietnamese Embassy to France. Also of note is the important and exceptionally rare The Antiquities of Cambodia (1867) by John Thomson, which contains the first original photographs of Angkor Wat. In many cases, these photographs and related ephemera (including correspondence between royalty, French colonial governors, and senior officers) originate from the family archives of prominent colonial figures. These include: Jules Bosc (Resident Superior of Laos, 1918–1931); Père René Detry (Paris Foreign Missions Society); Albert Sarraut (Governor-General of Indochina, 1911–1914 and 1917–1919); Maurice Graffeuil (Resident Superior of Annam, 1934–1941); Jean Moura (Chief Administrator of Cambodia, 1868–1879); Marcel Ner (a 1930s French philosophy teacher, writer, educationalist, ethnologist, and supporter of Vietnamese independence); Armand Rousseau (Governor-General of Indochina, 1895–1896); and Van Oest (a Parisian publishing house active in the 1930s and 1940s).