Une vie en Indochine

1 / How to search (“Comment chercher”)

1-1 The browse menu (“Parcourir”)

The query tools are grouped in the "Browse" (“Parcourir”) menu.
The home page of the Browse menu gives access to all the contents (“Contenus”) of the database (1397 records) as well as to the full text search engine (the magnifying glass).

The Browse (“Parcourir”) menu allows you to access the different search modes of the database :
- search by collection (“Rechercher par collection”)
- advanced search (“Recherche avancée”)
- index of photographers (“Index des photographes”)
- thematic index (“Index thématique”)
- index of locations where the photographs were taken (“Lieux de prise de vue”)
- index of countries where the photographs were taken (“Pays de prise de vue”)
- index of persons in the photographs (“Index des personnes représentées”)

1-2 Search by collection (“Rechercher par collection”)

The database "A Life in Indochina: Delphine and Adrien Noblot (1904-1937)” is organised like the photographic collection. Each "volume", that is to say the albums, the boxes of glass plates and the gendarmerie report provides a separate and identifiable entry point (see “Le projet”).
The basic building block of Omeka S is the item (“contenu”), which is associated with one or several images (the "media") and attached to an item set (“collection”). It is therefore possible to understand the Noblot collection as a documentary ensemble, accessible via “Rechercher par collection” as :
- the albums
- the boxes of plates
- the Cochinchine-Cambodia Gendarmerie Report
The fundamental unit is the photograph but each photograph is attached to a set, i.e. the particular page of an album or the gendarmerie report. The glass plates are attached to their box.

1-3 Advanced Search (“Recherche avancée”)

The Advanced Search offers a full-text search tool (“Recherche en texte intégral”) but also a more precise search on a term (“rechercher par valeur”) in a specific field or fields (AND / OR operators) (“ET/OU”).

The identification of the photographs sought to produce information on :
- the places where the photos were taken
- the factual subject of the photo and a more complete description of the image in its production context (the Noblot family)
- the date of the photo
- the author of the photo
The objectives set by the data model of the documentary records (an Omeka "content") are to respond to a full-text search, a specific search by type of data and therefore by field and to produce an intelligible record. The data model also had to be adapted to the Gendarmerie Report which is a mainly written source, describing places but for which the photographic description fields are inoperative.
The data model associates each field with a property of data schemas used by the semantic web (Dublin Core, Vra3, etc.).

1-4 Shooting locations ("Lieu de prise de vue", "Pays de prise de vue")

They are informed in 3 fields :
- Document title (attributed) / Titre du document (attribué), VRA Core 3 property vra:Title (VRA Titre)
- Place of capture, VRA Core 3 property vra:Creation Site
- Country of shooting, Dublin Core property determs:spatial (Couverture Spatiale)

The Document title field (assigned) is the synthetic description of the image. It is composed of a place and a theme (example "Tanan: colonial gendarmerie and civil guard in review for July 14th").

The fields Shooting place and Shooting country are worded as they were named in the colonial era, completed with their current name for Vietnamese toponyms. All these places can be queried through the indexes of the Browse menu. The default value for views taken in Indochina is "French Indochina".

1-5 Iconographic description ("Sujet de la photo")

The iconographic description is structured in 3 fields:
- Document title (attributed), VRA core 3 property vra3:title / "Titre"
- Inscriptions, Dublin Core property dc:alternative title, which contains all inscriptions, signatures, marks and stamps present on the paper prints
- Iconographic genre, Dublin Core property dc:subject / "Sujet" associates each photograph with a list of keywords. These keywords constitute the thematic index
- Description, Dublin Core property dc:description, describes more precisely the iconographic content
The default value is "Unidentified" / "Non identifié".

1-6 Date of shooting ("Date de création")

The date of shooting field uses the Dublin Core Created property : dcterms:created / "Date de création" .

1-7 Photographer (Photographe)

The photographer field uses the Dublin Core property dc:creator "Createur". The default value is "Unidentified" / "Non identifié".

1-8 Other request fields

The other queryable descriptive elements used the following properties :

2 / Presentation of the photographic collection

The database "A Life in Indochina" displays the photographic collection of a French couple, Adrien and Delphine Noblot, who were in Indochina in the 1920s and 1930s. Adrien Noblot was a gendarme.
Together with his wife, Delphine (née Dubois), he spent most of his life in French Indochina, from which they brought back a photographic collection of about 1,200 images and a report on the Cambodia-Cochinchina Colonial Gendarmerie Section.

The photographic collection of Adrien and Delphine Noblot was entrusted by their family in 2020 to the laboratory InVisu UAR3103 CNRS/INHA for study and availability to researchers.
The collection consists of approximately 1,250 photographs arranged in three albums, a typed report illustrated with photographs and stereoscopic views on glass plates. There are no negatives.
All prints were made with silver gelatine bromide. The stereoscopic views were printed on glass plates, with the exception of one view on cellulose nitrate. Of the paper prints, 59 are postcards. The signatures and marks of 29 photographers can be found on the paper prints.

Approximately 450 photographs (prints and glass plates) have captions, or are accompanied by captions in the case of the report.
The collection is deficient in written documentation. The family account of their Indochinese life is not  continuous. All the protagonists are deceased. The history of the collection was passed on by Adrien and Delphine Noblot's daughter, Claudette, to her children and grandchildren. But these elements remain fragmentary.

The vast majority of the photographs have no captions, marks or inscriptions. Identification of the photographs was necessary. It was based mainly on online sources.

2-1 The Albums

There are three of them and they construct a narrative that is thematically structured and chronologically meaningful without being completely coherent. The two chequered albums present photos dated mainly from 1928 to 1937.
The first album was entitled “Les plages” (“The Beaches”), because it begins with seaside photos. Its basic chronological parameters are 1928-1934, although there is a photo of Adrien whose estimated date is 1904. The majority of the pictures was taken between 1930 and 1932, the main subjects being:
• Beach scenes Cap St-Jacques, Longhaï, Panthiet (1930-1931)
• Delphine and Claudette Noblot’s trips (1930)
• Views of Saïgon, Mytho and Phnom Penh (1930)
• The repression of June 1930, Saïgon
• Pictures of military ceremonies (1930-1935), the inauguration of the monument to Auguste Morère (1934), the King of Siam’s visit to Saïgon (1930)
• Social life and friends : Blachère, Thomachot, Missol, Rinieri, Dasseux, Cadol in Saïgon, unidentified friends from An Khé, the Monnet family (unlocated)
• Studio portraiture (with no date)
• The Thomachot’s trip to the Cham towers near Nhatrang in Annam (not dated)

The second album, the "Phnom Penh" album, begins with photographs and postcards of Phnom Penh and is chronologically bound to approximately 1928-1936. The dates identified give a chronology from 1928 to 1936, but it is not possible to date the postcards from the Nadal Studio with certainty. At best, one could presume that they were purchased at the same time. The main subjects of the reports in the album "Phnom Penh" are:
• King Sisowath’s cremation, King Monivong’s coronation and the Monivong Bridge inauguration in Phnom Penh (1928)
• Cochinchina gendarmerie stations
• A trip to Dalat with gendarmes’ families (around 1934-1935)
• Hunting parties
• River patrol squads in Cambodia
• Views of Phnom Penh with Adrien and Delphine Noblot (around 1935-1937)

The third album, the “Brun” (“Brown”) album, covers a wide chronological period, 1923-1937.
However, most of the pictures were taken between 1932 and 1937. Not all the pages of the album are used and some of the photos have not been mounted. They have just been left lying between pages. The brown album shows:
• Military and civil ceremonies (1936-1937), with the Monivong bridge inauguration in Phnom Penh
• Portraits
• The family house in Vonnas, Ain département (1937 ?)
• The Saïgon Eucharistic congress (1935)
• Caodaism religion
• The Phan Rang typhoon (1932)

None of the descriptions are completely exhaustive, duplicates are sometimes pasted into two different albums, there is a paper print of a glass plate (probably a contre-type). Photos have been extracted from their original places to complete other sets.

2-2 The Report "Gendarmerie coloniale – Détachement de Cochinchine Cambodge, section de Saïgon »

The colonial gendarmerie in Indochina at the time of Adrien Noblot was organised by two decrees in 1911 ( Bulletin annoté des lois et décrets. 1911-1, p. 532 and JORF 21 octobre 1911).
The decree of 20 October 1911 organised the gendarmerie into two detachments:
-The detachment of Annam-Tonkin whose headquarter was in Hanoi at the strength of 140 soldiers, including a captain in command.
-The detachment of Cochinchine-Cambodia whose headquarter was in Saigon: 140 soldiers. It was also commanded by a captain.
Adrien Noblot was promoted to second lieutenant commanding the section in 1929. Perhaps it was on the occasion of this reorganization that the report was commissionned from Second Lieutenant Noblot. It is dated and signed, 1st October, 1929.
The rapport (“Report”) is the most structured document in the collection, with the most captioned and contextualised photos. It represents the results of an inspection carried out on the gendarmerie posts of the Cochinchine-Cambodia district, Adrien Noblot’s district. It describes the means, missions and activities of these different posts. Numerous photos complete the overview.
Unless there is an explicit inscription on the photos, I have dated the whole to the date of the report, i.e. 1929.

Is the report the founding act, the constitution, of the Noblots’ photographic practice? It is tempting to think so as some photographs intended for the report, or initially inserted in the report, have ended up enriching the pages of the album but in the absence of any documentation associated with the collection, it is difficult to declare this definitively to be the case. The double condition of these peripatetic photos is indicated in the database by the link "est une partie de” (“is part of”) and "photo en relation” (“related photo”).

2-3 Stereoscopic views on glass plates

The 448 stereoscopic views on glass plates constitute a heterogeneous collection but the themes represented on the plates are representative of the rest of the collection.
However, the temples of Angkor, certain tourist sites such as  Bokor (Kampot province, Cambodia), Hatien (Hà Tiên, Kiên Giang province, Việt Nam), Oudon (Cambodia), and the Khône Falls (Laos) only appear on the plates.
There are no postcards or photographs of these sites in the albums. Similarly, the family interior in Saigon is only printed on glass plates.
The only identifying features for the glass plates are the labels on seven of the ten boxes and the cardboard dividers between the plates. The dividers usually include the title of the boxes.
These glass plates have degraded over time because in order to view them, they have to be taken out of their box.

The hope is that by publishing the photographs in a database, a certain coherence will be restore to these images in freeing them from the dispersal introduced by successive viewings of the stereoscopic plates, or the narration set by the albums' authors.

2-4 The documentation project

The collection has been digitised in its entirety, as well as all the elements that accompanied the collection, in particular the backs of the paper prints where possible. I have chosen to make available all the elements of the collection and the integrality of the collection, thus respecting its material reality. The structure of the database reflects the organisation of the Noblot collection: by box of glass plates, by album, then by page and finally by photo.
The data model, the descriptive schema of the images, combines several ontologies of the semantic web: Dublin Core, VRA3, and FOAF. The description of the collection was initialised on the Tropy application, a free and open source tool, perfectly adapted to image processing. However, as Tropy does not allow the data to be published, OmekaS was chosen for the online publishing and editorialisation.

2-4-1 How to read a record : the data model

The picture description is meant to be very basic :

- Titre du document (attribué) (vra:title) / Document title (given) : place and subject of the photo
- Inscription (dcterms:alternative) : Inscription
- Nom du photographe (dcterms:creator) : name of the photographer or « Non identifié / Unidentified »
- Date de prise de vue (dcterms:created) : date photograph taken
- Lieu de prise de vue (vra:locationCreationSite)/ Place where the photograph was taken and Pays de prise de vue (dcterms:spatial) / Country in which photograph was taken : in French and Vietnamese for Vietnamese toponyms
- Technique photographique (dcterms:type)/ photographic medium : always « photographie positive »
- Type de tirage (vra:material)/ type of photographic print : tirage papier (“paper print”), tirage sur nitrate de cellulose (“cellulose nitrate print”), plaque de verre (“photographic plate”), carte postale (“postcard”)
- Technique de prise de vue (vra:technique)/ shooting technique : for the stereoscopic photographic plates
- Dimensions (vra:measurementsDimensions) : for pages and glass plates
- Genre iconographique (dcterms:subject)/ iconographic type : thematic indexation of the photographs by genre (see the index)
- Description (dcterms:description)/ Description
- Personnes représentées (foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf)/ Persons represented in the picture
- Source icono et bibliographique (dcterms:bibliographicCitation)/ Iconographic and bibliographic source : iconographic or bibliographic reference for the photo
- Est référencée par (dcterms:isReferencedBy) : link to an online source that references, cites, or otherwise points to the photo
- Photo en relation / related pictures (dcterms:relation) : for sets scattered in albums or reclassified
- Est une version de / is a version of (dcterms:isVersionOf) : for multiple prints
- Est une partie de / is a part of (dcterms:is part of) : Links a photo to the compendium page (album or report)

The places where the photographs were taken are described as precisely as possible, with the town given its French name (the name used during the colonial period) and its current Vietnamese name for pictures shot in Vietnam.
The description of individuals is problematic as it is difficult to say what the supposed nationalities of the people represented are, in particular, the case of the so-called "Moï" populations. The term "Moï" is particularly heavy with connotations and yet it is associated with a specific photographic genre that goes beyond the simple representation of picturesque populations. The descriptors "proto-indochinois / proto-Indochinese", "montagnard / mountain dwellers" (not all of them live at high altitude) or "Pemsian" were used after the period of the collection and have therefore been discarded. They are certainly more respectful of the populations represented, but they tend to rob the photo of some of its sense, or at least the iconographic genre in which these photos fit.
Failures of identification or interpretation are labelled by a field value of "Non identifié / unidentified" for the subject depicted or the photographer's name and "French Indochina" for the locations.
Adrien Noblot is the author of many of the photographs, but never appears with photographic equipment in hand. There are no negatives in the collection as entrusted to us. According to family tradition he had an aptitude for photography, but no one knows how it started. The only equipment kept by the family is a wooden stereoscope for viewing the plates. It is therefore not possible to affirm that all the photographs without any attributed author are by Adrien Noblot.
The photographs in the collection construct a coherent narrative about the life of a French couple in Indochina. They reflect the life of the Noblot family, their gregariousness, leisure activities and of course the colonial gendarmerie, Adrien Noblot's professional activity.
This appreciation of the collection, on the basis of the documents which have been given to us, is conclusive. It was revealed once the photographs had been identified one by one.

3 / Identification of the pictures

The images in the Noblot collection were identified mainly through online sources, public and private, iconographic and textual.

3-1 Sources

The principle sources used for this identification were :
- Archives nationales d’Outremer (ANOM),
- Musée du Quai Branly,
- l’Ecole française d’Extrême Orient (EFEO)
- Bibliothèque nationale de France (catalogue et Gallica)
- Asemi (Asie du Sud-Est et Monde Insulindien) published online by the Université Cote d'Azur
digital library (Humazur).

The signatures or stamps of 36 photographers or photographic studios appear on the paper prints.
The indications given by the labels on the boxes of glass plates circumscribe the Indochina of the Noblots to Cochinchina, the south of Annam, that is to say the southern half of present-day Vietnam and Cambodia.

These geographical limits are strict and telling. No photos or postcards of Tonkin, with the exception of a studio portrait, nor the imperial city of Hué, are present in the album. Some Cochinchinese subjects are also absent, such as the city of Cholon, the Chinese and industrial part of Saigon.
The restriction to the southern half of Indochina is in keeping with Adrien Noblot's professional career.
It also reveals the family's interests and tastes.

3-2 The Noblot family topics

The collection can be divided into three main themes: personal life (family and friends), professional life and the colonial gendarmerie and finally a documentary on Indochina. Under the third theme is tourist and picturesque Indochina, colonial and local architecture, "ethnographic and social types", and life in the colony (official and private ceremonies). The counterrelief of these subjects can be surprising.

3-2-1 The postcard imaged Indochina

The postcards in the collection are typical of the production of photographs taken in Indochina for Westerners at the time: monuments, temples and pagodas, local festivals and street or rural scenes (working in the rice fields), military or religious ceremonies (eucharistic congress, funerals) etc.
Major events that marked the life of the colony are also well represented: the funeral of King Sisowath and the coronation of his successor Monivong in Phnom Penh in 1928. All these events are covered in the collections of the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO) and the Musée du Quai Branly.
Some events that produced photographic coverage do not appear in the collection: Paul Reynaud's visit to Indochina in 1931, the attempts to set an air speed record between Paris and Saigon (on 9 September 1931, Maryse Hilsz set the long-distance flight record Paris-Saigon-Paris and on 16 December 1935, André Japy landed in Saigon setting a new record over the distance), and the visit of Astrid and Baudoin of Belgium in 1932.
Interestingly, on page 29 of album 1 "Les Plages", stuck in the middle of the report on the festivities organised for the visit of the sovereigns of Siam to Saigon (14-16 April 1930), there is a Belgian stamp with the effigy of Queen Astrid of Belgium. Is this repentance for the lack of photos illustrating the visit of Astrid and Leopold of Belgium to French Indochina in March 1932?
Of the many photos taken by professional photographers first and foremost amongst them is Fernand Nadal whose ubiquitous productions are inescapable for Indochina in the 1920s and 1930s. Some of the photographs appear to have been commissioned by the administration, which used professional photographers active in the colony. The photographs of the personalities of the colonial administration (residents, governors) and the King of Cambodia come from professional studios, as indicated by numerous stamps: Photo Nadal Saigon, Royal Photo Phnom Penh, Catinat Photo, Khanh Ky, etc. These studios were also used for portraits and family subjects.

3-2-2 Family life

The family and social life of the Noblots is the main subject of the collection. There are many photos of the seaside, especially at Cap St-Jacques (Vung Tau, Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, Việt Nam), excursions to Dalat (Đà Lạt, Lâm Đồng province, Việt Nam), Thudaumot (Thủ Dầu Một, Binh Duong province, Việt Nam), walks in the Saigon botanical garden.
Surprisingly, missing from the collection are photos of major family events, such as Adrien and Delphine's wedding. They got married in France, so the photos could have stayed there. On the other hand, their daughter Claudette made her communion in Saigon cathedral. There are no photos of the ceremony in the albums, nor are there any photos of Claudette before the age of 9 (photos "Scène de théâtre: troupe en costume" album_Noblot_vol-1_26-02 and album_Noblot_vol-1_26-04).
A series whose limits are difficult to determine may have been taken before the final departure from Indochina in 1937. They show Delphine and Adrien in Phnom Penh, in Saigon and especially the interior of their house in the officers' barracks, and portraits in their car.
Another reportage seems to show the social status of the Noblots. It is about one or more big game hunting trips with their good friends, colleagues and neighbours, the Blachères.

3-2-3 Tourism in Indochina

It is impossible to pinpoint the exact location of the hunting parties in the collection. The southern part of French Indochina, and in particular Dalat, seems to have been the centre of hunting activit in the tourist literature of the period if anything to go by  encouraged by: Les grandes chasses en Indochine, published by Le Bureau officiel du tourisme indochinois in Saigon on the occasion of the Paris International Exhibition in 1937; Pierre Bouvard et F. Millet. Dalat, sanatorium de l’Indochine française : La chasse au Lang-Biang :  Nouveau guide illustré. Bergerac : J. Castenet, 1920; André bon. Petit Guide illustré de Dalat, Indochine française. Hanoï : Imprimerie d’Extrême-Orient, 1930. The photos in the Noblot collection conform to the stereotypes of the genre: dress, display of trophies and firearms.

The temples of Angkor are well represented in the glass plates. An entire box is devoted to them. They were already famous at that time and were already being marketed as tourist drawcards (Bontoux, Henry. L'inauguration du tourisme aérien en Indochine: de la rivière de Saïgon aux douves d'Angkor-Vat. Revue indochinoise illustrée n°35, mai 1929).
Many of the temples considered the most prestigious at the end of the 1920s are still so considered today. Of the fifty views of Angkor, three show sculpted pediments, including the famous pediment of Banteay Srei, which can be seen today in the Guimet Museum. However, only two photographs show Ta Prohm. This temple, highly picturesque nowadays, was certainly less so at the time as not all the temples had been completely cleared of vegetation that makes Ta Prohm so photogenic.
Cambodia's tourist appeal is not limited to the major historical sites. Kep-sur-Mer (Kep province, Cambodia) was a seaside resort, the counterpart of the high altitude resort of Bokor (Bokor, Sthany Phnom Bokor, Kampot province, Cambodia) from which Adrien Noblot brought back some views. And close to the Cambodian border, the beach of Hatien (Hà Tiên, Kien Giang province, Việt Nam) and its two stone pinnacles detached from the coastline by marine erosion, was already a fashionable beach.
The collection offers a very important and more original documentation related to the professional life of Adrien Noblot, a colonial gendarme stationed in Indochina throughout his career.

3-2-4 French colonial gendarmerie

The documentation on the colonial gendarmerie section of Cochinchine-Cambodia occupies a predominant place in the collection.
The gendarmerie report is an important source of information on the organisation of the section: the activities, resources and buildings of the colonial gendarmerie posts in the district. Other reports in the albums show the awarding of a decoration to Adrien Noblot and military ceremonies.
The structure and coherence of this report, signed by Adrien Noblot and dated 1 October 1929, enabled me to identify certain photos in the albums. One of the albums contains a large number of photos of gendarmerie posts, tours and portraits which are inconsistently captioned. The layout of the report is such as to clearly intend that a photograph should accompany the text. Notches cut into the paper to regular dimensions are to be found under the headings. However, some places are captioned and empty of the photos that were intended for them. Searches in the database uncovered some of these photos, reclassified or otherwise scattered in the albums.

The first stage of my research was to reconnect many of the photos within the Noblot collection, the next was to connect them with others, made possible by searching online collections.

3-3 The reseach of the images

Many of the photos were very easy to identify because they show iconic Indochina: monuments, public buildings, many of which still exist and had been disseminated by postcards and albums produced by professional photographers.
The geographical and chronological coherence and the interests of the Noblots were useful guides in identifying the postcards of Indochina. The narrative of the collection created by the constitution of the albums and the redaction of the report allowed me to connect some photographs that were isolated and appeared, a priori, as unicums.

3-3-1 Two pictures identified unexpectedly in Cairang

This uncaptioned photo shows elements of colonial architecture, including the market with a metal structure. There were many in Cochinchina, however, not all of them are located on the edge of a rach crossed by a metal footbridge. A search on the markets of Cochinchina led me to Mannhai's personal website which published a photo produced by the Government general in Indochina, as indicated by its number « A-1304 GG ».

I then matched this photo of the market in Cairang, near Cantho (Cái Răng, Cần Thơ, Phong Dinh province, Việt Nam) with another photo in album 2 "Phnom Penh", also taken near a rach and lacking a caption.

Superimposing the two photos, we get this.

Both views show the rach bordering the Cairang market. Whilst these photos do not show any gendarmerie to speak of, the photos could owe their origins to the professional social network of Adrien Noblot, perhaps an unknown gendarme stationed at Caïrang. The photo on the left seems to take the child as its subject and the one on the right, the family of a gendarme on the junk.

3-3-2 A roof overlooking an unknown bay

Photographs taken in French Indochina, whether commissioned by the administration or taken by professional photographers, to a large extent focus on urban planning and architecture. Colonial architecture is an important point of comparison for identifying views and locating them, such as the unknown bay in the stereoscopic view boite_mont_plage_10.

It comes from a box of stereoscopic views which unfortunately has a missing label and no cardboard divider. I have entitled it "Boîte Mont plage" because the views it contains show the beach and the mountain of Cap Saint-Jacques.
On this isolated plate, a ship is seen in a bay. It is a panoramic view taken from a roof terrace with a balustrade, a decorative motif quite common in prestigious colonial architecture: large hotels or other recreational places (le cercle sportif de Phnom Penh).
The mountainous landscape limits the possible locations and coastal sites are not very numerous in the collection.
Adrien Noblot went to Annam with his family. A box of glass plates and photographs printed on paper in one of the albums (the Cham monuments) have captured the memories of this trip. Many of these balustraded buildings can be found in Nhatrang in Annam (Nha Trang, Khánh Hòa province, Việt Nam): the Oceanographic Institute, the Beaurivage Hotel, the Grand Hotel, Yersin's house and a group of villas built in the early 1920s.
Among the thousands of photographs found on the internet on personal websites and travel blogs, one in particular shows this same ventilation shaft.

The photo in the Noblot collection was taken from the top of one of the colonial villas overlooking Cau Da Bay. There are five of them. A photo taken by a public works enthusiast and left on Google Street View convinced me that it was the Villa des Agaves (site consulted on 5 December 2022).

3-4 Searching by patronyms

Military personnel, as well as diplomats and colonial administrators, are well documented online.
Genealogical sources have offered additional information on the friends of Noblot who did not feature in official publications and other such sources.

3-4-1 Private persons

A dozen names and occupations are listed on the backs of photos in the Noblot collection. Searching for these surnames on genealogical sites (a resource available by subscription) has often made it possible to complete the identities of wives and children, or just to narrow down the homonyms on Gallica, and to complete the professions and activities of Noblot’s friends, all of which are useful steps in dating certain images and establishing social relations.
The name Ogoyard is inscribed on the reverse of three photos. I thought I could recognise the group in a dozen photos, including the beach photos at Hatien. A young woman, accompanied by a little boy and a man who could be Pierre Ogoyard. The publication of theirs photos on Généanet (resource available on subscription) confirmed my suspicions and I concluded that the Ogoyard family appear in 13 photographs, including a series of photos taken at Wat Nokor and Ta Prohm of Bati.
Pierre Ogoyard was a non-commissioned officer in a Tonkinese rifle regiment when he joined the colonial prison administration in Cambodia in 1926. He was then posted to Cochinchina (Poulo Condore, a prison off the coast of Cochinchina  and "Maison centrale" of Saigon used to house the long terms sentences). A chapter of the 1929 report deals with the administration of the Poulo Condore prison. Adrien Noblot and Pierre Ogoyard may have met in Phnom Penh or in Poulo Condore.

3-4-2 Colonial adminstrateurs and public figures

It is fairly easy to reconstruct the career of public figures through photographic and printed sources, particularly the administrative directories. The administrative directories list the names, rank and function of colonial officials in French Indochina. But the subjects of the photos in the Noblot collection are not systematically named. A photo from the Royal Phnom Penh studio shows French officials on the steps of a building, presumably the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh.

The man in the centre of the picture is well known. He is Aristide Le Fol, a senior colonial official posted throughout Indochina until 1931. He was French Resident (official representative of the French government) in Cambodia from 1927 to 1928. On the other hand, the person standing to the right of Aristide Le Fol appears in many photos without being named. He may be confused with Pierre Pasquier. He is frequently found alongside Governor General Alexandre Varenne in photos put online by the Varenne Foundation.

French administrative directories list the names, ranks and functions of colonial civil servants in French Indochina.
Alexandre Varenne was appointed Governor General of Indochina in July 1925. He remained in office from November 1925 to October 1926, then from May to November 1927. The photo of the Varenne Foundation was probably taken in 1927, when Blanchard de la Brosse and Le Fol were Governor of Cochinchina and Senior Resident in Cambodia respectively.
The Secretary General of the Government of Indochina in 1927, when Varenne was Governor, was Maurice Monguillot.

Maurice Monguillot was then in charge of the interim government between the departure of Alexandre Varenne and the appointment of René Robin on 7 August 1928. He was therefore acting Governor General of Indochina when he went to Phnom Penh for the coronation ceremonies of King Monivong.

3-5 The research of Printed sources

The administrative directories do not describe events in the colony in detail. The colonial press, however, does. Many titles have been put online by Gallica or Retronews, the press site of the BNF (Bibliothèque nationale de France).

The photo album_Noblot_vol-2_07-02 shows a metal bridge decorated with flags. In the foreground are photographers carrying cameras, in the background a group of officials, including the King of Cambodia under a parasol and Resident Le Fol, who are about to cut a ribbon.

On 31 October 1928, King Monivong and Resident Le Fol inaugurated the bridge built south of Phnom Penh, to cross the Bassac River: the first Monivong Bridge. The construction of the bridge is documented by the photographic collections of the Quai Branly Museum (PV0022371, PV0022372, PV0012678, PV0030908, PV0030890, PV0020332 etc.). The ceremony was reported in the 3 November 1928 edition of L'avenir du Tonkin: "Cambodia - Phnom Penh. Inauguration. The Superior Resident and King Monivong inaugurated this morning at 6:30 a.m. the great Bassac bridge, built by the Levallois Perret company. A huge crowd attended the ceremony, the King whose name the bridge will bear proceeded to cut the ribbon barring the bridge, then accompanied by the Senior Resident and a large procession, made the crossing. At a luncheon, the King awarded the insignia of Commander of the Royal Order of Cambodia to Mr. Reich, engineer, and decorated a native corporal [etc.]."

Another group of about thirty photos shows minorities in costume on the streets of Saigon (album "Brown" number 3, pages 24 to 30). These people come from all over Indochina: Cambodians, people from the highlands of Tonkin, Annam and Laos.

The composition, the fact that all the characters are posing, the framing and the quality of the photos attest to a professional production. The print number in the back and the presence of a similar collection in the Quai Branly Museum confirm this (Pierre Sénéchal-Chevallier donation). The captions of the Musée du Quai Branly mention Saigon, 2 October 1936 as the place and date of the photographs.
There are many official events that have benefitted from professional photographic coverage in the Noblot collection (the Eucharistic Congress in Saigon in 1935, the visit of the sovereigns of Siam on 14-16 April 1930, etc.). This series appears in the "Brown" album immediately after the Eucharistic Congress in Saigon.
L'Avenir du Tonkin provides us with the information on the circumstances of this gathering. It was the celebration of the completion of the Transindochinois, the railway line that links North Vietnam to Saigon. The juncture was made in Annam on 2 September 1936 in the presence of Emperor Bao Daï and Governor General René Robin (in office from 1934 to September 1936). But the celebrations took place in Saigon, capital of the colony of Cochinchina, from 27 September to 3 October 1936. L'Avenir du Tonkin dated 22 August 1936 details the programme for the festivities:
"Cochinchina - Saigon. Great celebrations will mark the completion of the "Transindochinois" in Saigon. We announced yesterday that the Governor General had decided to celebrate the inauguration of the Transindochinois with "grandiose festivities to be held in Saigon". Several sources suggest that these celebrations will take place in early October - most likely on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd. These events promise to be something special; they will celebrate with dignity the completion of a work begun 40 years ago and which concerns all of Indochina.
A nautical festival on Thursday, October 1st, an evening at the Municipal Theatre on Friday, October 2nd [...] The theatrical evening of October 2nd will constitute a great spectacle and will bring together on stage the picturesque types of all the parts of the Indochinese Union. A table will be devoted to each country: Tonkin, Annam, Cochinchina, Cambodia, Laos. The Moïs, numbering 70 or 80, will appear in a special performance.
Finally, a vast "finale" will bring together and parade on the stage all these volunteer extras, dressed in their holiday costumes. We can already estimate the number to be in the hundreds. Rough mountain men from Upper Tonkin and Laos, Cambodian dancers, nostalgic singers from Hanoi and Hue, Moïs with tanned torsos will represent all of an Indochina now united by the Transindochinois [...]. "

The arrival of the inaugural train is described by L'Avenir du Tonkin, dated 3 October 1936, p. 7:
"Saigon 2 October. Governor General p.i. [par interim] Silvestre officially inaugurated on October 1 the section of the Trans-Indochina Railway from Tuy-Hoà to Dai-Lanh [...]. On Friday morning, at 9 o'clock, the gubernatorial train arrived in Saigon by the Le Boulevard de la Somme, pulling into the station Lemyre de Villiers, before the places reserved to the delegations of the countries of the Union whose picturesque costumes put a stroke of colour beneath a tropical sun. Along the lavishly paved route, a crowd of several thousand people were pressed together in several rows. As an artillery salvo rang out, the train stopped in front of the official stand where were seated General Buhrer, Supreme Commander of the Indochinese troops, and the Resident Superior [official representative of the French government] of Cambodia, Mr Thibaudeau, His Highness Prince Monireth, representing the King of Cambodia and several hundred people.
Military honours were paid to the Governor-General, who was accompanied by H.H. Prince Vinh Can, representing the Emperor of Annam, Governor Rivoal, the Administrator of Annam, Guillemain, the Inspector of Public Works, etc. [...] ".

In the photo on the left, the locomotive enters the Le Myre de Villiers quay in Saigon, at the junction of the Somme and Charner boulevards, as indicated by the customs building in the background. The officials get off the train (photo right). The article of 3 October 1936 names all these personalities but in the absence of a caption it is difficult to know who is who.
In the Silvestre family archives, kept at the Service historique de la Marine in Rochefort (reference MR 46 S 22), there are several portraits of Achille Silvestre that allow us to identify with certainty the acting Governor General, in the centre, wearing glasses. To his right, André Rivoal (?) looks at the photographer and to Silvestre’s left, General Burher. Léon Thibeaudeau, Resident of France [official representative of the French government] in Cambodia, could be the rightmost character in the group, wearing a moustache and colonial helmet, facing the train.

The identification of these images, the celebrations and the official train of the Transindochinois, was made possible by the narrative of the Noblots such as it appeared in the organisation of the albums.
If the albums, taken as a narrative, inform the photos: what do the photos tell us about the history of the collection?

4 / The Noblot collection history

Once the identification and dating of the photographs had been completed, it became possible to take another look at the collection through the prism of the database. The interaction of the personal story of the collectors and the information conveyed by the photographs provides directions for retracing the history of this photographic collection.

4-1 History of Adrien Noblot (1885-1942)

His service record ( "fiche matricule" ), preserved in the Bouches-du-Rhônes departmental archives, outlines his military career and the circumstances of his arrival in Indochina. The earliest photograph of Adrien appears to be the first photo on page 21 of Album 1 "Les plages", possibly taken before his departure for Indochina as a volunteer in 1904.
Two other photographs show him in 1906 at the barracks in Saigon and in 1923 in an unidentified location.

Adrien Noblot appears in the Indochinese colonial press from 1929, the date of his appointment to the rank of lieutenant of gendarmerie. This is also the date of his report on the Cochinchine-Cambodia gendarmerie section (Rapport de gendarmerie coloniale Cochinchine-Cambodge, p. 81 (op.cit).

• 1929 : Appointed lieutenant in Cambodia, he takes command of the gendarmerie district of Saigon (L'Avenir du Tonkin, July 31, 1929)
• 1933 : Promotion to the rank of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour of Lieutenant Noblot, "so well known in European as well as in native circles. This just reward speaks for itself and we send our warmest congratulations to the newly promoted" (L'Avenir du Tonkin, 18 March 1933)
• 1936 : Lieutenant Noblot of the Cochinchine-Cambodia detachment is promoted to captain (L'Avenir du Tonkin, 27 June 1936)
• 1937 : "Captain Noblot of the Gendarmerie will leave us for good soon. He will embark, with Mrs Noblot, on the "Président Doumer" on the 18th. Captain Noblot has been in this country for 28 years, 25 of which were in the gendarmerie. He is an old Cochinchinese figure who will leave us. His departure will be deeply regretted" (L'Avenir du Tonkin, July 5, 1937)

 According to his service record, he was demobilised on 25 April 1939.

With the exception of the 1906 and 1923 photographs, the first images in the collection that can be dated with certainty are those of the cremation of King Sisowath of Cambodia in March 1928 and the coronation of his son and successor Monivong in July 1928.
This is probably the starting point of the Noblot collection: documenting their life in Indochina, illustrated by photographs set out in albums or compiled in boxes for the glass plates. Unless the report on the gendarmerie was the trigger.
The “Phnom Penh” album could be the work of Adrien Noblot. Some photos from the report were taken out in order to be inserted in album 2 "Phnom Penh", which would support the idea that this album was Adrien's.
Album 2 “Phnom Penh” contains mainly non personal views of Indochina, hunting photos,  gendarmerie photos and very few family photos. It is difficult to date the cards of the Moïs precisely. Fernand Nadal's postcard production began in the 1920s and continued after 1954.
The second chequered album then might be that of Delphine Noblot, being more representative of the daily life of expatriates in the colonies and especially that of a wife and mother.

4-2 Delphine Noblot pictures, The beaches album and the Brown album

Adrien met Delphine Dubois (1898-1945) during a visit he made on holiday to Vonnas in the Ain, where Delphine was born. She was a seamstress. They were married in that town in 1919 (Archives départementales de l'Ain, mariages de l'année 1919 à Vonnas). Their only daughter Claudette (1920-2013) was born in Cantho, Cochinchina (Cần Thơ, Cần Thơ province, Việt Nam).
Delphine is the most represented person in the photos of the family collection.
She was a licensed driver. A great many photos can be attributed to her, including those of her daughter Claudette, many of the excursions and the beach scenes.

During group excursions, Delphine Noblot, in order to be present in the photo, sometimes entrusted the camera to Claudette. The excursion to Ba Lua (near Thudaumot, Thủ Dầu Một, Binh Duong province, Việt Nam) with Mr Dasseux and an unidentified couple in May 1930, illustrates this photographic complicity between mother and daughter. In the photo on the left, we see Delphine's shadow and her little cloche hat, holding a camera equipped with a Rolleiflex-type viewfinder with a fixed mirror. Claudette replaces her in the photo on the right. The adults have sat down in order to  be at Claudette’s height.

It is tempting to credit Delphine for the creation of album 1 Les Plages (“The Beaches”) as family and social life is the dominant theme. However, the album of the beaches is also the one that ends with the report on the repression of the June 1930 insurrection.
As for the "Brown" album, it is unfinished. Several pages are empty and some prints are not fixed on the pages. Is this the last album of the collection? Was it the early deaths of Delphine and Adrien that left the album in this state?

To interrogate the albums and try to associate an author with an album raises the question of the date of production of the albums, as the photos do not follow each other chronologically, the identification of individuals is random and it is not clear whether the names are not known or forgotten.
The inscriptions on the back of the photos in album 1 "Les Plages", page 11, are a jumble of places (Qui Nhon, An Khé, Kontum), dates (19 and 20 October 1930) and an occupation, "director of the stud farm at An Khé, Qui Nhon". The photos show a house, that of the director, and a family whose name we don’t know.
The merely functional and somewhat ramshackle nature of the inscriptions would suggest that they may have been put in after the return to France when memories had started to fade, or even later, by Claudette Noblot.
Another anonymous figure is omnipresent in the collection. He appears in almost every series of photographs. And in particular, on the beach at Cap Saint-Jacques, in a photo that shows, camera inhand, René Blachère.

René Blachère's name is not inscribed on any photo. It was given to me by the descendants of Adrien and Delphine Noblot. The references to René Blachère in the directories and administrative bulletins of Indochina are consistent with his presence in the photos.

4-3 The Blachères

René Blachère, his wife Paule d'Ornano and their daughter Geneviève, are key figures in the collection. They are almost as often represented in the photos as the Noblots. Three photos show René Blachère with a camera. The Blachères appear in the Noblot photos from 1929, when Adrien is posted to Cochinchina. They are present in many photographs: beaches, hunting, Cambodia (Angkor, Phnom Penh), Dalat etc., up to Vonnas in France.
Captain René Blachère (1893-1985) was a colonial gendarmerie officer. Commissioned in 1911, he pursued a military career that took him to Indochina in 1926, which he left, like the Noblots, in 1937.
His service record (fiche matricule) is published by the Archives départementales du Vaucluse. Initially posted to Hanoi, he became commander of the Cochinchine-Cambodia gendarmerie section in 1929. He carried out several missions in Nui-Bara, from which he brought back the body of Maréchal des logis Auguste Morère who had created this gendarmerie post.

In 1932, he was on a mission to Khone on the border of Laos and Cambodia. Paule Blachère posed on the rocks of the Khone Falls and on most of the glass plates taken in Angkor.

4-4 Photographic plates attribution

While the paper photos and postcards mention 29 photographers, the glass plates are more difficult to credit. The views of Mrs Paule Blachère taken at Angkor were most likely taken by her husband René Blachère, as neither Adrien nor Delphine Noblot are present on any of the Angkor views. I have also attributed the views of Preah Vihear to René Blachère for the same reasons. The pediment of Banteay Srei shown in the photo boite_angkor_07 has been kept at the Guimet Museum (Paris, France) since 1936. I have therefore dated the plates to 1935.

As for the first stereoscopic views, they seem to appear in the collection in the mid-1930s.

Claudette Noblot is hardly represented on these plates even though she is the dominant subject of the family representations. Adrien and Delphine are often present in views of Saigon and  Phnom Penh where they are alone posing in rather poorly framed views.

For the methodical views of the interior of the flat, of Adrien at his desk, did the Noblots favour this type of photography. Was this the last trip, the one for the final return to France? Did they wish to complete their collection with the most spectacular views of their life in Indochina?

Or did they borrow René Blachère's room? It is difficult to say, as neither René Blachère nor Adrien Noblot are present in the views of Vonnas that seem to complete the collection.

At least one series seems to come from a professional photographer, the one on the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1937.

It is very likely that the stereoscopic views of the rice fields and interior views of the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh were also purchased from professional photographers. As the plates are not signed, it is difficult to know the authors. The Noblot collection could perhaps provide a new element on Fernand Nadal's production.

4-5 Fernand Nadal stereoscopical views

Fernand Nadal, another central figure in the Noblot collection, was a very important photographer and postcard publisher in French Indochina in the 1920s and 1930s. Although focused primarily on Cochinchina, Annam and Cambodia, his photographic output is extensive and has been valuable in identifying and locating photographs in the Noblot collection. The marks and captions on the photographs in the albums indicate that Adrien Noblot bought or obtained a very large number of photographs from professional photographers, notably Nadal.
Oddly, the man, Fernand Nadal, is very poorly known and to this day, no source concerning him mentions glass plates. However, the resemblance between three stereoscopic views from the Noblot collection and his postcards is striking.

The photographs by Fernand Nadal, and many other photographers who were very active in Indochina, as well as the collection of glass plates, suggest that Delphine and Adrien Noblot, when they put together their collection, were guided by a desire to remember and share a vision of an elsewhere to which few people had access.
However, it should not be concluded that the Noblot collection lacks originality. Adrien Noblot's position as an officer of the gendarmerie and his professional network provided the source for some very original photographs.

5 / Originality of the collection

The context in which I studied the collection does not allow me to comment on the rarity of the photos. My main sources are online and I have visited few archives. However, the collection contains some surprising and even unpublished photographs. They sometimes provide new information on similar collections.
The Noblots built up their collection from a wide variety of sources. Sometimes they favoured their photographs over those of professionals. There is a series of photographs by Nadal covering  The visit of the Governor General of the Philippines, Dwight F. Davis, in the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient (EFEO_CAM22971 and EFEO_CAM22972) and the Archives nationales de l'outremer (ANOM), but it is the simple amateur photographs that the Noblots have chosen for their collection (album 1 "Les Plages" p.18).

However, in most cases the origin of the documentary photographs is professional.

5-1 Professional photographers stamps and marks

The collections of the Musée du Quai Branly and especially those of the Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient, document quite thoroughly the funeral of King Sisowath and the coronation of his successor Monivong. The EFEO (Ecole française d'Extrême-Orient) has put online no less than 63 photographs of his coronation in July 1928. The Musée du Quai Branly holds a very  complete series from the photo library of the Musée de l'Homme, which they in turn received from the Government-general of Indochina. Unfortunately, in both cases these photographs are anonymous, as they are in the Noblot albums.
Along with these anonymous prints, there are postcards published by the "Royal photographie, Phnom Penh" photographic studio, which was active at the end of the 1930s, particularly on behalf of the administration.

On one photo from the Noblot collection there is a stamp which I have not found elsewhere. The Eucharistic Congress in Saigon, which was held from 12 to 16 December 1935, was the subject of an  article in the missionary organ Echos de nos missions in 1936. It reproduces, on page 91, several photos which are also in the Noblot collection. The Noblot collection gives us the source of one of the photos reproduced in Echo de nos missions, that of the cathedral’s altar. It is signed: Tourist Photo 48 rue J. Eudel, Saigon.

5-2 June 1930 repression

The last five pages of the album 'Les Plages' bring together a series of photographs, about thirty, showing disorder, a mobilisation of men in uniform, civilians running in the street or lying on the ground, material destruction and the gathering of prisoners.

I think I recognise Adrien in some of the photos, those where two Vietnamese prisoners are invited by a gendarme to move to his left. Adrien's attachment to Vietnam is part of family folklore. Adrien Noblot knew Vietnamese and his attempts to pacify the insurrection by negotiation earned him a decoration.

We do not know who the photographer is but his presence does not disturb the gendarmes. One of them is looking straight at him. The photographer seems to have had complete freedom. The professional origin of these photos is confirmed by the pencil retouching on some of them.

It was common practice for professional photographers to retouch photographs. The accentuation of contrast gives a sharper image in the press. One can compare the photos already discussed of Monivong's coronation with those published by the Excelsior newspaper on 20 September 1928. The practice is rarer among amateur photographers whose images are unlikely to be published. These retouchings can only be found in this series. None of the other paper prints in the albums have them.
They once again raise questions about the collection. What was Adrien Noblot's part in these albums and who is the author of these photographs? Adrien Noblot or a professional who benefited from his protection to be in the right place at the right time?
Supporting the professional origin of these images is the presence of 3 similar photos in the Associated Press archives (283765483804; 615972216231; 335270531920) found thanks to the Manhhai website.
The Associated Press publishes them with this caption:
"Vietnamese take part in a native uprising against the French in Saigon, South Vietnam, Nov. 1940. Exact date is unknown. (AP Photo)".

The Noblot collection suggests that this caption is inaccurate. Adrien and Delphine Noblot had left Indochina by 1940. The series of photos in their album is more complete than that of Associated Press and furthermore is inscribed on the reverse: « Hocmon le 4/6/1930 ». The inscriptions in the series give the following dates: 4th to the 6th June, 1930. And the following localities: Duc Hoà (town and district in the province of Long An), Ba Hom and An Thanh where the prisoners of the 4th of June were gathered.

The insurrection of June, 1930 was not insignificant. It came shortly after another event which rocked the colony, the Yen Bai mutiny in Tonkin. The Saigon uprising sparked a voluminous correspondence between Saigon and Hanoi (the seat of the Government-general of Indochina). The archives of the government of Cochinchine remain in Saigon, but the political and economic reports sent to Hanoi, the political capital of French Indochina, are available at the Archives nationales de l’Outre-Mer in Aix-en-Provence.

There one can find in box GGI 64342 the reports of Krautheimer and a long note from the Governor General to the Minister for the Colonies on the events of May-June, 1930. In boxes GGI 65433 to 65435 are the letters and telegrams sent from Hanoi and in box GGI 65436 there are file notes on anti-French activities.

The insurrection of June, 1930 should be seen in the context of the highly politicised climate of the inter war years, where the emergence of Vietnamese nationalism, the demands for reform by the educated youth, the situation economic, social and fiscal were exacerbated by the crisis of 1929 (Daniel Hémery «Révolutionnaires vietnamiens et pouvoir colonial en Indochine : communistes, trotskystes, nationalistes à Saigon de 1932 à 1937». Paris, France : F. Maspero, 1975; Daniel Hémery et Pierre Brocheux. Indochine, la colonisation ambiguë. Paris : La Découverte, 2012).

This unique series of photos disturbs the otherwise exotic and happy image of Indochina conveyed by the collection of Delphine and Adrien Noblot.

 Translated by James Nygh.