Young Bride from the Yunnan Province - China, circa 1900 Photographer:
Auguste François Ref:
SK06607-08
Auguste François (1857-1935) was a French diplomat in Indochina from 1896 to 1904. He was not a commercial photographer, but photographed extensively during his business travels and used the images he took to add color and depth to his diplomatic writings. His collected works are currently preserved at the Guimet Museum in Paris. We imagine that François took this photograph of a young bride on her wedding day during his travels to the Yunnan Province in Southwestern China and that the richness of her bride's dress and the stoicism in her regard helped him to understand and write about the over twenty-five different ethnic populations that have lived in this region of China for nearly 2000 years.
