The world has really been spoiling me with photographic subjects this week, but the Musée et Jardin Albert Kahn made Monumenta look like a thirty cent lollipop. I've been wanting to visit since reading about Albert Kahn for my MPhil, so when an available sunny day popped up yesterday I jumped instantly onto the bus to Boulogne-Billancourt. I have to go back, though, as it surpassed my (already high) expectations and five hours certainly was not enough.
It felt like summer yesterday, and so the gardens exerted a particular pull. It felt at first as if the entire world had felt the same way, with crowds gathered on the shores of the little lake just outside the museum's backdoor. The further I walked, however, the more everything changed, and I went from a highly stylised Japanese garden filled with children playing to the midst of a dense forest, where I met only insects and strange birds, and back again along a different route, via formal gardens, romantic gardens and slices of the countryside.
Albert Kahn made his money as a banker, but his mark as a philanthropist. In 1909, having accumulated a fortune, Kahn set up Archives de la Planète, a project for the creation of a visual inventory of the world as it was in the early twentieth century, providing a record for future generations. Kahn employed others to travel the world and photograph life, accumulating 72,000 colour photographs and around a hundred hours of footage on film. Unfortunately, Kahn was ruined by the crash of the stock market in 1929 and had to auction much of his collection, dispersing it. Kahn's garden, which he had worked on since 1893 and which had been a popular meeting place for the intelligentsia, became a public park.
The Département de la Seine acquired what came to form the contents of the Musée Albert Kahn in 1936. Kahn's garden has changed somewhat since his day, though it retains the same 'tour de la monde' spirit; much of the English garden was destroyed in a fire in the 1950s and a large part of the Japanese garden was revised in the 1990s. Kahn's house is still on the site, tucked away beside the rather dramatic blue forest, but isn't accessible to the public. The Musée Albert Kahn opened in 1968, but I think (my source is rather unspecific) that the building it's housed in dates from 1990... it's a beautiful building and I plan to research more on that at a later point.
I'm also planning to write separately about the current exhibition (on Mongolia) and the aspects of the collection which relate to my PhD (on interwar travel in Indochina). There's too much to this institution to cover in the space of one blog post, just as there was too much there for me to be satisfied with just one afternoon. It's also a good time of year, with flowers in bloom and nice weather, to visit such a lovely garden.
The Jardin Albert Kahn begins with a charming water feature at the back door of the museum and a small path that's very crowded on warm days, shaded by an assortment of lovely trees. There's a pyramid of stones at the top of this path that seems to be the origin of the water that flows both toward the museum and into the dramatic lake that appears in most images of this garden.
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I was surprised at how busy this area was, though I didn't particularly mind the crowds. It mostly stimulated thoughts on what it was exactly that people wanted in their 'tourist' experiences (whether in their own country, as I think most were French, or elsewhere) as everybody was straining to take photos which minimised the presence of everybody else. I overheard a woman saying to her partner "you can't take a photo, there are people everywhere".
It might be because one's mental image of the ideal garden is a place of peace and peace is often imagined as solitude, or it might just be that people's clothes clash with their surroundings (this is often what I find to be a problem). It's probably partially both these things, but I think on some level it's that the presence of others, in photographs, makes it feel as if a moment belongs less to oneself.
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It might be because one's mental image of the ideal garden is a place of peace and peace is often imagined as solitude, or it might just be that people's clothes clash with their surroundings (this is often what I find to be a problem). It's probably partially both these things, but I think on some level it's that the presence of others, in photographs, makes it feel as if a moment belongs less to oneself.
I initially started automatically to do the same sort of thing, looking for ways to compose photos without people without even thinking about it, but then realised that part of the pleasure of the garden was the myriad of different people there. I found a loud American tour group a trifle irritating, but the giggles of children jumping from rock to rock were nice alongside the subdued chatter of young couples and the amicable silence of the elderly. I liked seeing people sitting with sketchpads beside the water.
People were, in the end, quite hard to photograph as the backdrops were often too busy. I'm not really used to taking photographs of people, though.
Walter Benjamin wrote that in the late nineteenth century the diminished importance of inherited hierarchy, alongside the increased blurring of the public and private spheres, meant people began to define their selves through the items they decided to purchase. I'm reading Proust at the moment and the same idea comes through sometimes. Similarly, now, photographs are glimpses into value systems, and often illustrate more what one liked about a place than what it is the place itself was like.
Technology now allows famous monuments to be accessible -at least virtually- to almost everyone. Increased tourism has robbed central parts of cities of the kind of local identity that Kahn sought to capture in Archives de la Planète, and there's recognition that walking down the Rue du Rivoli won't give you a deeper experience of French culture (though tourist culture, maybe). As the famous experiences -the stops on the Grand Tour- become more and more accessible to everyone, there comes a certain pressure to be unique while traveling. One is encouraged to research, to think more deeply than simply proffering their own opinion on something endlessly discussed and to engage with a city as a real place, not just as a caricature of itself.
I suppose finding a place which others haven't found is a way of proving one's personal engagement with a city, that one has permeated a level deeper than others, and photos with others in them (even if it's only just over 100,000 people a year who visit the Musée et Jardins Albert Kahn, which I expect is nothing compared to the Louvre) spoil that impression of discovery. Even when people have been to the same places, they find ways of implying that they've seen them differently to others, like finding new angles on the Eiffel Tower when, really, that classic shot from the Place du Trocadero is still beautiful. In travel writing, authority often comes from having found a place that the reader hasn't.
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It's interesting, though, to think about this attitude to cultures in the context of Kahn's period. When Kahn set up Archives de la Planète it was to provide what the internet now theoretically offers, a comprehensive picture of the world. At the same point in time, though, explorers were charting jungles and naming rivers and colonisers were dividing up the world and trying to 'tame' it, by which they meant 'make it Western,' something globalisation has done much more than any power (though it can be argued that globalisation is its own form of colonisation, of course). It seems that the desire for the 'untouched' has just switched from the wilderness of nature, with its deep ravines and islands at sea, to the wilderness of the large city, with its closed doors, twisting streets and outer suburbs.
I do these things, too: I take photos without people, reflect monuments in puddles and feel a sort of thrill when I stumble upon a lovely place I've never read about. I think researching to make one's experience of a place more personal is more creative than just following itineraries in guidebooks and I do think it results in a deeper, more personal engagement with a city that's ultimately probably more satisfying (for me). It's nice to see people who have come to the same place, though. There's a sort of silent kinship.
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Nonetheless, it's also nice to be alone sometimes and the Jardin Albert Kahn strikes a balance between cheerful crowds and utter solitude. Strangely, it seems that the loveliness of the Japanese garden, with its rocks, shimmering fish and bonsai trees, arrests most visitors, as everywhere else is almost empty.
There were a few people in the next section, divided from the first by a screen of bamboo, which was sort of like a formal orchard with flowers, though still not as many as around the lake. This area is much simpler in composition than the modern Japanese garden, and so works effectively as a pleasant, relaxing area after the excitement and drama of one's initial experiences.
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While the exhibition on Archives de la Planète and early twentieth century records of Mongolia is inside the museum, an exhibition of Mongolia in 2012 is in a dark corner of the garden. It didn't seem to be receiving many visitors, but this area -the blue woods- acts as the dramatic beginning to the wilder sections (though to call them 'sections' feels wrong, given they blend into one another as if naturally occurring) of Kahn's garden. There's a more deserted valley area, with lawns and flowers but also dramatic trees hovering overhead. There are some ponds here, too, but without the laughter, and clouds of wildflowers.
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After this, I turned up a small path and entered a much darker forest. I didn't see any other people for the duration of my time in this dark forest, but met some peculiar birds with blue tails that fanned out. There were ferns on the ground in some places, which reminded me of New Zealand.
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As I emerged from this forest, I found a quiet cottage covered in vines. This is probably a good example of a place where there's a definite appeal to being alone; a locked-up cottage has a romanticism that it probably wouldn't with children climbing and yelling. As you can tell by the comparative lack of text, though, it was primarily the modern Japanese garden that inspired such ruminations on discovery and the twenty-first century tourist.
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The 'English' landscape garden (though I know why these gardens are linked with England, having studied them at uni, I've seen so many in France lately that I start to find it strange referring to them as such) isn't as spectacular as some other examples around Paris, such as the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, but is another lovely surprise. There's a walk across rocks raised above a small lake, lots of trees and a lawn. A rose garden and arboretum are nearby, and rather spectacular.
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The tour de la monde ends almost where it began, with another Japanese garden, this one with pavilions for tea ceremonies (which, I hear, the museum holds regularly). Again, it's amazing, and really makes you wonder how a museum that's free for many and never more than three euro can afford to keep up this sort of landscape, with its myriad of plants and architectural elements, put on such exceptional exhibitions and maintain their extensive archive, much of which they've also managed to digitise. Even putting this impressive feat, though, the Japanese garden is beautiful.
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One ends where they began, at the pyramid of pebbles, overwhelmed from all the visual stimulation and the excitement of discovering so many different landscapes in an afternoon. It was, for me, now later in the day, so I decided to look again at the lake of bonsai trees and found, at 6pm, it was much quieter. I'm sure most will find, similarly, that this is the kind of place to which one wants to return. After discovering the Jardin Albert Kahn, it's necessary to find time just to look at it.
I suppose finding a place which others haven't found is a way of proving one's personal engagement with a city, that one has permeated a level deeper than others, and photos with others in them (even if it's only just over 100,000 people a year who visit the Musée et Jardins Albert Kahn, which I expect is nothing compared to the Louvre) spoil that impression of discovery. Even when people have been to the same places, they find ways of implying that they've seen them differently to others, like finding new angles on the Eiffel Tower when, really, that classic shot from the Place du Trocadero is still beautiful. In travel writing, authority often comes from having found a place that the reader hasn't.
It's interesting, though, to think about this attitude to cultures in the context of Kahn's period. When Kahn set up Archives de la Planète it was to provide what the internet now theoretically offers, a comprehensive picture of the world. At the same point in time, though, explorers were charting jungles and naming rivers and colonisers were dividing up the world and trying to 'tame' it, by which they meant 'make it Western,' something globalisation has done much more than any power (though it can be argued that globalisation is its own form of colonisation, of course). It seems that the desire for the 'untouched' has just switched from the wilderness of nature, with its deep ravines and islands at sea, to the wilderness of the large city, with its closed doors, twisting streets and outer suburbs.
I do these things, too: I take photos without people, reflect monuments in puddles and feel a sort of thrill when I stumble upon a lovely place I've never read about. I think researching to make one's experience of a place more personal is more creative than just following itineraries in guidebooks and I do think it results in a deeper, more personal engagement with a city that's ultimately probably more satisfying (for me). It's nice to see people who have come to the same place, though. There's a sort of silent kinship.
Nonetheless, it's also nice to be alone sometimes and the Jardin Albert Kahn strikes a balance between cheerful crowds and utter solitude. Strangely, it seems that the loveliness of the Japanese garden, with its rocks, shimmering fish and bonsai trees, arrests most visitors, as everywhere else is almost empty.
There were a few people in the next section, divided from the first by a screen of bamboo, which was sort of like a formal orchard with flowers, though still not as many as around the lake. This area is much simpler in composition than the modern Japanese garden, and so works effectively as a pleasant, relaxing area after the excitement and drama of one's initial experiences.
While the exhibition on Archives de la Planète and early twentieth century records of Mongolia is inside the museum, an exhibition of Mongolia in 2012 is in a dark corner of the garden. It didn't seem to be receiving many visitors, but this area -the blue woods- acts as the dramatic beginning to the wilder sections (though to call them 'sections' feels wrong, given they blend into one another as if naturally occurring) of Kahn's garden. There's a more deserted valley area, with lawns and flowers but also dramatic trees hovering overhead. There are some ponds here, too, but without the laughter, and clouds of wildflowers.
As I emerged from this forest, I found a quiet cottage covered in vines. This is probably a good example of a place where there's a definite appeal to being alone; a locked-up cottage has a romanticism that it probably wouldn't with children climbing and yelling. As you can tell by the comparative lack of text, though, it was primarily the modern Japanese garden that inspired such ruminations on discovery and the twenty-first century tourist.
The 'English' landscape garden (though I know why these gardens are linked with England, having studied them at uni, I've seen so many in France lately that I start to find it strange referring to them as such) isn't as spectacular as some other examples around Paris, such as the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, but is another lovely surprise. There's a walk across rocks raised above a small lake, lots of trees and a lawn. A rose garden and arboretum are nearby, and rather spectacular.
One ends where they began, at the pyramid of pebbles, overwhelmed from all the visual stimulation and the excitement of discovering so many different landscapes in an afternoon. It was, for me, now later in the day, so I decided to look again at the lake of bonsai trees and found, at 6pm, it was much quieter. I'm sure most will find, similarly, that this is the kind of place to which one wants to return. After discovering the Jardin Albert Kahn, it's necessary to find time just to look at it.