Cannes, France

“At Cannes. In a villa where the little orphans of the war are raised. Recreational dance,” ca. 1914 – ca. 1918, photographer unknown, via the Université de Caen Basse-Normandie Commons on flickr.

The photo is one of over 1,800 donated to the archives of Seine-Maritime in Rouen and the Université de Caen by the founder of Lafond Printing in Rouen. The sepia photographs have been digitized in their original condition: glued on bristol board with handwritten captions identifying places and scenes. Most of the pictures concern World War I.

You can click on the image to enlarge it.

Aix-en-Provence

“Hot water in the City of the Thousand Fountains,” Aix-en-Provence, France, ca. 1910, by Guittard (published by C. Martinet), via Casas-Rodríguez Collection, under CC license.

The Fontaine d’Eau Chaude was the first fountain built on the Cours Mirabeau — in the 1600s. The hot water (34°C/64°F) comes from the hot springs of Bagniers. There are current photos here and here, showing it still covered in moss.

Senlis, France


Grounds of the château of Captain René-François Fenwick, Senlis, France, December 26, 1914, by Auguste Léon, via Archives of the Planet Collection – Albert Kahn Museum /Département des Hauts-de-Seine.

The house itself had been largely destroyed in a WWI battle about four months before the photo was taken (another image here). Fenwick was a captain of the 31st Regiment of the Dragons who fell in combat in July 1918 (“an example of energy and good humor under fire”).

The autochrome above is one of about seventy-two thousand that were commissioned and then archived by Albert Kahn, a wealthy French banker, 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 photo (A 4 757) is © Collection Archives de la Planète – Musée Albert-Kahn and used under its terms, here.

Fontainebleau

Part of the formal garden of the Château de Fontainebleau, with the Grand Canal barely visible in the distance, Ile-de-France, France, between 1914 and 1925. This is a glass lantern slide by Williams, Brown & Earle, Inc., via Archives of American Gardens, Garden Club of America Collection, Smithsonian Institution (used here by permission).

The Archives holds over 60,000 photos and records documenting 6,300 historic and contemporary American gardens.  At its core are almost 3,000 hand-colored glass lantern and 35mm slides donated by the Garden Club of America, which is the source of this image.

(Click on the picture to enlarge it.)