Photographs of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway: Industrial Heritage and Ethnological Heritage

Abstract (English)

The Yunnan-Vietnam Railway between Haiphong in Vietnam and Kunming in China was built at the beginning of the 20th century as part of the major infrastructure projects that France was developing in its colonies. A mythical railway due to the complexity of its route and its technical challenges, it now constitutes a remarkable industrial heritage shared by China, Vietnam and France. As most of the documentary and photographic archives on this railroad are kept in France and in the light of our research work on it, presented in various articles and conferences, as well as in numerous photography exhibitions in China and France, we are convinced that photography is a rich and multidisciplinary resource for the transmission and enhancement of cultural heritage. The first point of our analysis concerns the importance of the nomenclature of the photographs, which can vary considerably depending on whether they have been listed as images of industrial heritage or as a resource for ethnology, indicating for example "Kunming station" or "Miao woman in front of Kunming station". Our second point concerns the transcription of the names of persons and places in the nomenclature of pictures, especially for non-Latin languages. In Chinese, for example, the current “pinyin” romanization does not correspond to the one used in the past and we recommend instead an updated nomenclature with names written in both the “pinyin” romanization and the Chinese language. Finally, our third point aims to highlight the value of photographic archives as a shared cultural heritage, shared between countries and peoples especially when these images have been taken by foreign photographers and represent views of these countries and their populations, sometimes in a particular historical context, but shared also between scientific and academic disciplines, that could seem quite far one from another, such as industrial heritage and anthropology.