In this chapter we will look at the very first photographs taken in Vietnam. These were produced in 1845 by the Frenchman Jules Itier, who also has the distinction of having made the earliest surviving photos of China a year earlier. Also included here is the earliest known portrait of Vietnamese taken by the traveller Fedor Jagor in 1857 in Singapore. This image is followed by the historical photos of Vietnam taken by the French naval officer Paul Berranger during the French invasion of 1858. His photographs include the earliest image of Saigon and, in 1859, the earliest known portrait of a Vietnamese taken in Vietnam. We also consider the Vietnamese embassy to Europe in 1863 where many of the participants were photographed.

At the end of the chapter, we look at the work of some photographers, both amateurs and professionals, who used their cameras in Vietnam during short visits. These include some well-known artists such as John Thomson and August Sachtler. Perhaps there were others which have survived and remain to be discovered, but research to date has only uncovered those shown here. Beginning in the 1860s, some photographers established commercial studios in the country and these will be the subject of Chapter 2.

ALPHONSE EUGÈNE JULES ITIER (1802–1877)

It appears that the first photographs of Vietnam were taken in 1845 in Tourane (present- day Da Nang) by the Frenchman Jules Itier, who was born in Paris on 8 April 1802. He was the son of an army officer and the fourth in a family of five children. His mother came from a family of customs officers and it was this profession that Jules would come to pursue, joining the French customs service at the age of seventeen and reaching the rank of inspector by the time he was thirty.

His work saw him travel extensively across France, and in November 1842 he was sent to Senegal, Guyana and the West Indies in support of France's commercial and colonial interests. It was in Saint-Louis, Senegal, that we first hear of Itier's interest in photography. He confided in his journal on 7 January 1843: ‘I am receiving my daguerreotype.’ How long he had already been practising photography is unclear, but from this time on he was an enthusiastic practitioner, recording his travels on camera whenever and wherever possible.