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Travel photographer’s home is a Reims Museum

Time-tripping travels in the Hugues Krafft house museum …

MARTINA NICOLLS

Jan 15

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Globe-trotting Hugues Krafft, born in 1853, was a wealthy industrialist and hoarder of artefacts. After his adventures, he settled in Reims and made the Hôtel Le Vergeur, a historic Gothic-Renaissance building, his home and passion project. He filled Le Vergeur Museum, known as the Hugues Krafft House, with a treasure trove of quirks and curiosities. The house itself is a medieval marvel with an avant-garde mishmash of Gothic arches, Renaissance flourishes, and Krafft’s own eccentric touches from his travels around the world.

Walking through Le Vergeur Museum is like flipping through Krafft’s scrapbook. Each room tells a story of discovery. But it’s also a harbour, a place of rest between travels.

Krafft was one of the earliest Westerners to visit Japan after its borders reopened to the world in the mid-19th century. His visit in the 1880s came during the Meiji Restoration, a period of rapid modernization and cultural transformation. He fell in love with the country and photographed samurai, geisha, and traditional artisans, and collected Japanese artifacts like lacquerware, kimonos, and ceramics.

Krafft journeyed to the Middle East and its deserts, where he explored Egypt, Syria, and Persia (modern-day Iran). His sketches and photographs of mosques, bazaars, and palaces of Islamic architecture captured the intricate details of their design. His time in Persia included visits to royal cities like Isfahan and Tehran, where he admired the opulent tiles and intricate calligraphy of Persian art.

In Russia, he documented the czarist empire. His adventures included a journey along the Trans-Siberian Railway, one of the world’s great engineering feats at the time. He visited St. Petersburg and Moscow, photographing the domed cathedrals and grand palaces. His writings about Siberia captured insights into a remote and little-explored region.

Krafft’s travels to India, during the British colonial era, included Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur. He was awestruck by the Taj Mahal, and collected Indian textiles, jewelry, and miniature paintings.

His wanderlust took him to Southeast Asia – to Vietnam and Cambodia – where he visited the temples of Angkor Wat. In North Africa – Morocco and Tunisia – he documented the Berber and Arab cultures, with their vivid markets and stunning landscapes.

His adventures were more than personal escapades. He was an early practitioner of travel photography and ethnographic documentation. He used a Zeiss camera with gelatine-silver bromide plates, which enabled him to capture the open environment, rather than the cameras of the time that only enabled studio photos. So, he was one of the first to use ‘instantaneous’ photography.

But that’s not all! The museum also boasts a series of 15^th century woodblock prints by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) from the Apocalypse series. The woodblocks show what the end of the world looked like according to a Renaissance artist!

Le Vergeur Museum – the Hugues Krafft House – in central Reims, France, is free to visit and includes his garden.

Photographer: Martina Nicolls