Figures of Chance and Contingency in Albert Kahn's Planetary Project

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Published: Oct 18, 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/syn.20891
Keywords:
Albert Kahn Jean Brunhes Archives de la Planète temporality of photography autochromes spatial metaphors human geography contingency
Marion Picker
Université de Poitiers
Abstract

The Archives de la Planète is a collection of visual material – about 100 hours of film, 72000 autochromes and 4000 stereoscopic images – established between 1908 androughly 1932. While the project was of Kahn’s inspiration (and also financed by him),the human geographer Jean Brunhes served as its scientific director. Its purpose was to document the diversity, but even more so, the underlying unity of human life and activity all over the globe. It seems thus fitting that Brunhes used a cartographic logicin mapping the “positive facts” of his science, relying on visual documentation. Thisarticle examines some of the temporal complexities and contingencies of representation inherent in the autochrome part of the collections. As archives within the archive, they upset the cartographic logic of the project.

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Author Biography
Marion Picker, Université de Poitiers

Marion Picker teaches German cultural history at the University of Poitiers. She works on cartographic anxiety, the poetics of knowledge, collections/museums, and early twentieth-century culture. Recent publications include essays on German political geography before 1933 (in Exil transfert mémoire, 2016), Walter Benjamin's city portraits (“Weichbild,” 2016), Jean Brunhes’ “Les limites de notre cage” (2019), and several articles on "mapping" as a method in cultural studies.

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