The lights were made in the Cornish workshop of Tom Raffield. The craftsmen used “sustainably sourced, British hardwood species similar to the trees found in this square,” according to a nearby sign.
Arrangement of tulips in the Tuileries Garden, Paris, May 8, 1925, by Auguste Léon, via Archives of the Planet Collection – Albert Kahn Museum /Département des Hauts-de-Seine.
These autochromes were taken at the Place du Carrousel, looking south to the Seine River. Today, there is a road and a roundabout (with a skylight for the underground shopping mall below) on this spot, which is just west of where I.M.Pei’s Pyramide du Louvre now stands.
It is also where Emmanuel Macron and his supporters celebrated his victory in the French presidential election runoff last night.
Today is La Fête de la Victoire in France. The public holiday commemorates the date of Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies in 1945, ending World War II in Europe.
The images above are four of about seventy-two thousand that were commissioned and then archived by Albert Kahn, a wealthy French banker and pacifist, between 1909 and 1931. Kahn sent thirteen photographers and filmmakers to fifty countries “to fix, once and for all, aspects, practices, and modes of human activity whose fatal disappearance is no longer ‘a matter of time.'”* The resulting collection is called Archives de la Planète and now resides in its own museum at Kahn’s old suburban estate at Boulogne-Billancourt, just west of Paris. Since June 2016, the archive has also been available for viewing online here.
*words of Albert Kahn, 1912. Also, the above photos (A 45 252, A 45 253, A 45 255 S, A 45 257) are © Collection Archives de la Planète – Musée Albert-Kahn and used under its terms, here.
“Early dwelling, 222 S. Perry St.,” Montgomery, Alabama, 1939, by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
A huge vine is growing beside the steps, but it seems to go up into the tree on the left, rather than onto the porch.
The sidewalk is tiled in a simple geometric pattern. The effect, with the arches of the porch and basement windows, is a little Moroccan/Andalusian.
The house no longer stands.
“Beekeepers Wallace Anderson and R.R. Talbert tending to tupelo honey beehives in Apalachicola, Florida,” May 6, 1948, via Florida Memory (State Library and Archives of Florida) Commons on flickr.
Another note on the Archive’s website says, “Typical scaffold, platform 14 to 16 feet high and 300 to 700 feet long on which colonies (hives) are placed.”
Magnolias in Rochester, New York, undated, via Arthur Peck Collection, OSU Special Collections & Archives Commons on flickr.
Since the late 19th century, Oxford Street in the city’s Park Avenue neighborhood has attracted visitors in May for its display of blooming magnolia trees. There is another vintage picture of the trees here.
Arthur Peck was a Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Oregon Agricultural College* from 1908 to 1948. This picture was part of his teaching library of 24 boxes of glass lantern slides — now in OSU’s archives.
*The college later became Oregon State University (OSU).
enclos*ure 