Jean Noury
Jean Noury (1935, Lucé, Eure-et-Loir, France — 2021, Chartres, France) was a French postcard collector who prospected commercial and personal archives to find visual documents reflecting French colonies and the colonial system, particulary across former French Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia).
An accountant by trade, Noury collected hundreds of postcards and photographic documents related to the peoples and territories of French Indochina — Lao, Cambodia, Vietnam and Kouang-Tcheou-Wan (today Zhanjiang) -, North Africa and Central Africa, dated between 1900 and 1920, and published them with his own tongue-in-cheek commentaries. His book L’Indochine en cartes postale avant l’ouragan [Indochina in Postcards — Before the Hurricane], first self-published in 1984 and reissued in 1992, was awarded the Prix du livre cartophile [Cartophily Book Prize] in 1992.
He also published other books based on his personal collections of postcards about French colonial territories. With his wife Monique Noury, he supported the NGO Les Enfants du Mékong for many years, contributing to support scholarship for children and refugees in Southeast Asia.
After Jean Noury’s passing in 2021, Xavier Lavernhe, his grandson, found some remaining copies of his Indochina book in the attic of their family house and resolved to work on a critical analysis of Noury’s pro-colonial approach, and the need to put this portrayal of the colonial system into perspective.
(1) Jean Noury receiving the Postcard Collector Book Award, 1992. (2) The author had certainly an eye for quirk: a “Cambodian beauty” at the Calais International Exhibition in May 1908, where a troupe of ‘Cambodgiens’ [Cambodian men] performed traditional dances. This postcard by Gillot (Boulogne), part of his collection (CPA OM 398 463 4), was initially selected for his 1996 book but didn’t make it to publication [all photos courtesy of Xavier Laverne].
(1) Jean Noury receiving the Postcard Collector Book Award, 1992. (2) The author had certainly an eye for quirk: a “Cambodian beauty” at the Calais International Exhibition in May 1908, where a troupe of ‘Cambodgiens’ [Cambodian men] performed traditional dances. This postcard by Gillot (Boulogne), part of his collection (CPA OM 398 463 4), was initially selected for his 1996 book but didn’t make it to publication [all photos courtesy of Xavier Laverne].
(1) Jean Noury receiving the Postcard Collector Book Award, 1992. (2) The author had certainly an eye for quirk: a “Cambodian beauty” at the Calais International Exhibition in May 1908, where a troupe of ‘Cambodgiens’ [Cambodian men] performed traditional dances. This postcard by Gillot (Boulogne), part of his collection (CPA OM 398 463 4), was initially selected for his 1996 book but didn’t make it to publication [all photos courtesy of Xavier Laverne].
Publications
- L’Indochine en cartes postales avant l’ouragan: 1900 – 1920 [Indochina in Postcards — Before the Hurricane], Chartres, Imprimerie Chartron, 1984 [self-published]); repr. Paris, Publi-fusion Editeur, 1992, 255 p.
- Les cartes postales anciennes racontent la France d’Outré-mer [Ultramarine France Recalled in Postcards]. Quirsinic, L’Aventure Carto, 1996, 293 p.
- Grandes figures d’Afrique noire. Cartes postales d’antan [Great Figures from Black Africa — Postcards of Yore]. Paris, Éditions des écrivains, 2003.