Vue de la Ville Chinoise (Cholen) Feuille No. 4
1866
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
23.9 x 30 cm (9 7/16 x 11 13/16 in.)
Classification
Photographs
Department
Photographs
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gilman Collection, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2005
Accession Number
2005.100.501 (12)
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Vue de la Ville Chise (Cholen) Feuille No. 4** *Émile Gsell, 1866* Albumen silver print from glass, 23.9 x 30 cm Step into 19th-century Saigon through Émile Gsell's captivating, *Vue de la Ville Chino (Cholen) Fe No. 4*. Captured in 1866, this depicts the bustling Chinese quarter of Chợ Lớn (Cholen), a vibrant hub of commerce teeming with boats gliding along waterways and dense clusters of buildings. As one of the earliest photographers in French Indochina, Gsell documented the exotic allure of colonial Vietnam shortly after French forces seized Saigon in 1861, offering a rare window ...
About the Artist
Emile Gsell · 1838–1879
Emile Gsell (1838–1879) was a French photographer who became one of the earliest Western photographers to document Southeast Asia, particularly the ancient temples of Angkor in Cambodia. Born in Sainte-Marie-aux-Mines in Alsace, France, Gsell traveled to Indochina in the 1860s, establishing a photographic studio in Saigon (present-day Ho Chi Minh City) that became a base for his documentary expedi...