Although he benefited greatly from the era’s economic developments, Kahn was skeptical of progress. The annexation of the Alsace-Moselle region where he grew up likely taught him how quickly things could (and did) change. Perhaps from that experience, he developed what was an inherently nostalgic outlook. To Kahn, industrialization represented an existential threat and one poised to destroy the cultural and environmental heritage he so valued. Instead of optimism, he viewed the future with resignation. Unable to stop time’s relentless advance, he did the only thing he thought possible to save this inheritance: record on film the world as it was.
Kahn’s nostalgia was mirrored more widely in France, where technological advancements were rapidly altering the landscapes of the nineteenth century. Such transformations were far from subtle. The results of Baron Haussmann’s grand project in Paris were unambiguous, with more than eighty miles of new streets and boulevards cutting through the capital. Cathedral-like factories sprouted along the Seine. Railway networks expanded, and travel, once a pursuit only available to the wealthy, became more accessible. The depressed moral state of the French following the humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War leant itself to a nostalgic gaze. Artists, both avant-garde and academic, celebrated the pastoral beauty of “la belle France”. The first law to protect and conserve historical monuments was passed in 1887. And even though the 1900 Exposition Universelle boasted displays of technological wonder, Albert Robida’s Le Vieux Paris, a model city glorifying France’s architectural history, would prove to be one of the Fair’s most successful attractions.3
In the midst of these huge societal shifts, and the nostalgia they evoked, came photography — a technology so apt at capturing and fixing time. The past no longer was simply past but now arrested forever in black and white. Color film would only make this feeling all the more powerful.
The nineteenth century was the century of color, during which new synthetic pigments expanded the landscape of chromatic representation. Historically, color had been laborious to produce, and so-called natural pigments were limited in range and often expensive to harvest. Consider Tyrian purple, the dark reddish-purple hue extracted from the secretions of sea snails in Lebanon, or ultramarine, which came from lapis lazuli mined in Afghanistan. Accordingly, the advent of synthetic dyes during the mid-nineteenth century radically increased the availability and application of color. No longer was it purely for the wealthy and the elite alone. Instead, a range of synthetic pigments could be used to dye the fabrics sold at the new department