This archive encompasses 400 still images and 23 silent films originally taken by André Bontemps (1888-1969), a deputy army judge who lived in the French Concession in Tianjin from 1931 to 1935. Taken chiefly in Tianjin in the mid-1930s, the photographs of this archive document this expatriate family daily life, their leisure, their travel experience, as well as military presence and activities in China. In 2011 Jacques Lacome (André Bontemps’ grandson) donated the entire archive to the Parisian research centre called Institut d'histoire du temps présent (IHTP). Since then the scholar Dr. Fleur Chabaille – specialised in Contemporary and Modern China urban history – offered a comprehensive visual study of this corpus [read her article here]. Starting from this case study, she eventually examined the French military presence in 1930s Tianjin. Today, the Institut d’Asie orientale (IAO) in Lyon digitized all the still and moving images, which are freely accessible on “Virtual Tianjin” website.
