Photographer Huong Ky Photo, archives of a precursor film maker in Indochina time

The name of Huong Ky Photo is more associated to the history of cinema in Vietnam than to Photography.

Located in Hang Trong Street (Rue des tambours), Hanoi, the studio photo was established in 1905 by Mr. Nguyen Lan Huong (1887 – 1949).

This street is famous for the production of a specific woodcut paintings. The craftsman only prints the black outlines of the image, then will finish the details by hand. Pigments are added directly on a paper called Xuyến chỉ (giấy Xuyến chỉ), producing a more vivid painting than other traditional methods used for example by Dong Ho Painting.

It is then not surprising that modern Vietnamese image makers were set in this neighborhood such as the famous photographer Vo An Ninh also.

Huong Ky Photo produced the first Vietnamese movie with the title Một đồng kẽm tậu được ngựa (A coin for a horse, 1924), inspired by a fable by La Fontaine – La laitière et le pot au lait.

According to the researcher Nguyễn Xuân Hoa on historical photography and movie in Vietnam, Mr. Nguyen hired a professional French film maker to realize the first documentaries movies in 1926 at the location of Huế Province:  Ninh Lang (2,000m long), the funeral of Emperor Khai Dinh, and the coronation’s ceremony of Bao Dai (“Tôn đức Bảo Đại”, 800m long).
There was also a project with Phan Bội Châu, a famous opponent to the French colonization who was under house arrest in Huế. The film has never been seen although the script was already ready.

At that time the whole country had 33 cinemas: Hanoi 4 theaters, Hai Phong 2 theaters, Hue 2 theaters, Cho Lon 4 theaters, Saigon 4 theaters, Can Tho 2 theaters…

Despite his reputation and his successful business, Nguyen Lan Huong stopped his cinema production but kept running this photographic studio. Some says, because media was under control of the French government, it will not allow a Vietnamese to run such activities.

As seen in our exclusive archives, he has nevertheless been published by French Magazine L’Illustration for his reportage of the visit of Emperor Bao Dai to Tonkin in 1934.

In 1949, Huong Ky Photo was handed over to the second generation of his son Nguyen Duc Thuan.

After the Geneva Conference of 1954 which signed the end of the French colonization and the partition of Vietnam in two entities, the family moved to the South, in the central highlands at Buon Ma Thuat city to begin a new career. The Indochina era was over.