Collections

Given the multiple identity of this property in Boulogne, simultaneously a development laboratory for the autochromes and films, a biology laboratory, a place for screenings, a printing house, a documentation center, a landscaped garden as well as the home of the banker, the Albert Kahn Departmental Museum is the depository of a wide range of collections.

The collection related to photographic and cinematographic techniques is particularly symbolic. Photographic material was able to be conserved following the purchase of the estate in Boulogne by the Seine département

and provides a glimpse of the laboratory that operated up until the retirement of its director, Georges Chevalier, in 1949: projection bulbs, development material as well as technical equipment, etc.

Despite this, a portion of this material was dispersed after Albert Kahn’s bankruptcy, which required the museum to acquire objects making it possible to evoke the laboratory’s operations in Boulogne. Acquired from the heirs of The Archives de la Planète’s camera operators, collections of personal objects related to their voyages or photography and cinematography have once again become a part of the museum’s collections.

The museum also conserves a large collection of furnishings from the banker’s estate and his villas in Boulogne and Cap Martin, enriched by recent acquisitions such as works produced by the painter Mathurin Méheut for his friend Albert Kahn.