First historical snapshots and street photography in Vietnam – Indochina period

This album is a rare archive containing snapshots and instant photos made by M. Barbet on his trip from Marseille (France) to Hanoi (Vietnam formerly Indochina ) in the early 20^th century on the steamliner of the company Messageries Maritimes .

Usually at that time, photography practice was made by professional photographers because the process involved heavy and voluminous gears to be setup. The low sensitivity of the film also needed a long exposure time.

The resulting picture was static, staged, and well composed, a result of a technical constraint, unable to seize the motion of life.

With the Brownie box camera introduced by Kodak in 1900, photography became more accessible to the large public. Advertised with the slogan “celebrate the moments of your life” and find a “Kodak moment”, photos were not anymore considered as a work of art but a mean to capture moments in time without concerns for a perfection.

In this album, we can guess clearly that photos are “amateur” by the style of the framing and the composition. In one image – the photo made in Hanoi – , because the shadow of the photographer is appearing in the final picture, we can see he held an “instant” camera.

This camera seems to be the Folding Pocket Kodak which was available at the time of the trip. It is supposed also to be held like a normal camera, close to the eye for framing and used the film 105mm , the same format ratio of the resulting pictures in the album

Beside the enjoyable pleasure to discover the travel to the Far-East passing by Port-Said (Egypte), Aden (Yemen), Colombo ( Sri Lanka formerly Ceylan), Singapore, and Vietnam in the early 20th century , this album provides an invaluable testimony in the History of Photography made in Vietnam (Indochina period) in the infamous style of snapshots of the street photography style.

Notes : the presented photos below are colorized to add a better contrast as the original ones have completely faded away