In 1909 the millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert\nKahn embarked on an ambitious project to create a colour\nphotographic record of, and for, the peoples of the world. As an\nidealist and an internationalist, Kahn believed that he could use\nthe new Autochrome process, the world’s first user-friendly,\ntrue-colour photographic system, to promote cross-cultural peace\nand understanding.Until recently, Kahn’s huge collection of 72,000\nAutochromes remained relatively unheard of. Now, a century after he\nlaunched his project, this book and the BBC TV series it\naccompanies are bringing these dazzling pictures to a mass audience\nfor the first time and putting colour into what we tend to think of\nas an entirely monochrome age.Kahn sent photographers to more than\n50 countries, often at crucial junctures in their history, when\nage-old cultures were on the brink of being changed for ever by war\nand the march of twentieth-century globalisation. They documented\nin true colour the collapse of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian\nempires, the last traditional Celtic villages in Ireland, and the\nsoldiers of the First World War. They took the earliest known\ncolour photographs in countries as far apart as Vietnam and Brazil,\nMongolia and Norway, Benin and the United States. In 1929 the Wall\nStreet Crash forced Kahn to bring his project to an end. He died in\n1940, but left behind the most important collection of early colour\nphotographs in the world.

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