Vue de la Ville Chinoise (Cholen) Feuille No. 6, Saïgon, Cochinchine
1866
Medium
Albumen silver print from glass negative
Dimensions
23.8 x 31.2 cm (9 3/8 x 12 5/16 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 (11)
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Vue de la Ville Chise (Cholen) Feuille No. 6, Saïgon, Cochinchine** (1866) by Émile Gsell captures a bustling riverside scene in Cholon, the vibrant Chinese quarter of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) in French Cochinchina. This albumen silver print from a glass negative showcases tightly packed houses lining the river, dotted with boats that hint at the area's thriving trade and multicultural energy. Gsell, a French photographer stationed in Indochina, documented colonial life with remarkable clarity, making this part of a numbered series ("Feuille No. 6") a rare visual record of 19th-century ...
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...