Vanuatu, archipel sous tension - Premières photographies (1885-1895)

The display Vanuatu, an Archipelago Under Tension at the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac brings together photographs taken between 1885 and 1895, among the oldest images of the archipelago held in its collections. Albums and prints depict landscapes and ni-Vanuatu communities at a time when France and Britain were competing for control of the New Hebrides.

Military personnel, travellers, missionaries, amateurs and professional photographers produced these images in a variety of circumstances. The cyanotypes of Félix Gaillard, a military doctor who was in the Pacific in the late 1880s, offer glimpses of the people and places he encountered. Other groups of photographs trace travellers’ routes or document European settlements.

Bringing these photographs together provides an opportunity to examine how they were made and circulated. Curated by Carine Peltier-Caroff and Marie Durand, this display in the Boîte arts graphiques places the earliest photographs of Vanuatu in the context of late nineteenth-century colonial tensions.

Practical information
- Boîte arts graphiques, on the Plateau des collections.
- Tuesday to Sunday, 10:30 am to 7 pm; until 10 pm on Thursdays.
- Open on Mondays during short school holidays in all French school holiday zones.
- Closed on 1 May and 25 December.
- Closes at 6 pm on 24 and 31 December.
- Free admission on the first Sunday of the month.