Vue de la Ville Chinoise (Cholen) Feuille No. 4

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 into a culturally rich enclave where Chinese merchants thrived amid rapid urbanization. Gsell's use of the albumen silver print process—coating paper with egg whites and silver salts from a glass negative—produced sharp, luminous details that brought distant scenes to life. This medium, dominant in the 1850s-1890s, allowed for affordable reproduction of travel views, fueling European fascination with Asia. Part of a numbered series ("Feuille No. 4"), it exemplifies early documentary photography's power to preserve everyday architecture and river life, blending artistic precision with ethnographic insight. Today, housed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Gilman Collection, this print highlights photography's role in bridging cultures, inviting us to ponder the intersections of trade, migration, and empire in colonial Southeast Asia. (198 words)

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...