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These rare color photos of Paris were taken over 100 years ago. 

In 1909, a wealthy French banker named Albert Kahn wanted to document the world using a new color photo process called Autochrome Lumière, so he commissioned 4 photographers to take their cameras all over the world.

One of the cities they documented was Paris.

Starting in 1914, Kahn’s photographers, Leon Gimpel, Stephane Passet, Georges Chevalier and Auguste Leon, documented life in Paris using color filters made from dyed potato starch grains.

They made these color photos over a century ago (with a small amount of color enhancing done on the original shots).

In addition to the many shots of Paris, around 72,000 Autochromes from around the globe were created through Kahn’s project.