Louis Arbey album of French Indochina, China and Egypt. [1875-1879]

ArchivalResource

Gsell, Emile, 1838-1879. Louis Arbey album of French Indochina, China and Egypt.

Louis Arbey album of French Indochina, China and Egypt. [1875-1879]

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/670110752

The album, compiled by Arbey during his expedition to French Indochina (Vietnam and Cambodia) and Yunnan, China in the late 1870s, contains 41 images of Indochina, six of China, and 13 of Egypt. The album begins with a photomontaged advertising image of some sixty small photographs laid over larger photos of Angkor Wat. A card in the center reads: Gsell, Photographe, Saigon. Subjects represented in the album include individual and group portraits, street, village, and harbor scenes, and colonial architecture in Saigon, Phnom Phen, and Hanoi. There are two panoramas of Hanoi; one features the newly-built French Concession; the other looks out over the rooftops of the old city. Cholon, the Chinese district of Saigon, is represented by two views and a photographic reproduction of a map of the area. Views from along the Song Ca (Red River) include a village located in Yunnan in southwesternmost China near Vietnam. The final thirteen photographs in the album are images of Egypt by Hippolyte Arnoux. The thirteen loose items inserted in the back of the album include a hand-colored drawing of a bridge; two sheets in Chinese containing advertisements for a pharmacy; eight leaves of notes written in French and Chinese, including Arbey's lengthy list of objets emportés; and two small envelopes addressed to Arbey.

1 album (60 photographic prints) : albumen ; album 32.5 x 46.5 cm.; prints 21 x 31.5 cm. or smaller + 13 items.

Getty Research Institute