Stéphane Passet
Item
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Title
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Stéphane Passet
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Date
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1875-1941
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birthPlace
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Thiers
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deathPlace
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Évian
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Description
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Passet – was a mounted police officer, and her mother – Jeanne Mondiere – was a housewife. Biographical elements remain quite meagre. What is known is that he volunteered in the French Army on 1st October 1895, in which he stayed fifteen years. He had a variety of duties, including driver, corporal, sergeant, and sergeant major. He left the military for the civilian sector on 15th November 1910 and moved to Ivry-sur-Seine in the suburbs of Paris. Two years later in 1912, he started to work for Kahn’s Archives de la Planète. The circumstances of his previous training as a photographer and cameraman, as well as his recruitment, remain unknown.
The visual archive left to us today reveal that two trips in China were organised in 1912 (between May and August) and 1913 (between the end of May and the end of June). Passet and his team travelled across China, visiting and recording places such as Beijing (which composes a large part of the archive in China) and northern sites (Great Wall and Ming Tombs), Shenyang, Zhangjiakou, Qufu, Shanghai, places along the Yangtze River, and Mount Tai (hereinafter referred to as Taishan).
Similar to the other operators working on behalf of Kahn, Passet received special training in Paris beforehand by the appointed the geographer Jean Brunhes (1869-1930), head of the project. Brunhes handled the necessary paperwork to obtain funding and authorisation to travel in the countries, while organising ‘preparatory meetings’ that consisted of intensive courses in Kahn’s own private mansion. Passet died on 7 July 1941 in his home in Evian.
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image
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Buddhist lama in Beijing, China, 1913. Autochrome from Albert Kahn's Archives de la planète. By Stéphane Passet (1875-1942) (Artblat.com) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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commons.wikimedia.org
China,_Beijing.jpg