Dance at the Royal Palace, 1931

Léon Busy (19 Apr. 1874, Paris — 1951, Paris) was a French photographer and curator who edited and participated to numerous photo collections about colonial Indochina, Angkor and Southeast Asian daily life.

Initially a soldier (graduated from the prestigious Polytechnique school) with the French colonial troops from 1895 to 1920, he contributed to various colonial Exhibitions in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. He came back to Indochina en 1921 to picture Angkor and Cambodia for the vast photo-and-film collection ​“Archives de la planète” set up by banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn. Kahn encouraged him in using the autochrome plate developed by the Lumière Brothers, which he had discovered during a 1909 screening by French photographer Jules Gervais-Courtellemont.

Busy worked closely with photographer René Tetard to expand the photographic service attached to the French colonial administration, first under the name of Service photocinématographique de l’Indochine, then Service économique de l’Indo-chine — and the short-lived Musée économique de l’Indochine located in Phnom Penh [1]. From 1926 to May 1931, he led the Photography Department of the Office indochinois de tourisme et de propagande, taking photos, working in close collaboration with Vietnamese photographers such as Ngoc Chan, Nguyen Huy Ky, and Dao Van Than, and gathering rich collections for touristic and documentary publications.

In July 2022, the Albert-Kahn Museum released online some 1,360 photos taken by Léon Busy in Indochina from 1914 to 1921, as the deadline to transfer these documents to Public Domain was reached.

[1] Numerous photographs by both authors were credited to these services without mentioning their names. This was in particular the case for the illustrations in Le Monde colonial illustré, ed. 1929 – 1930.

Autochrome photo, 1918 or 1921

1) Royal dancers near Angkor Wat, a famous photography by Léon Busy (probably dated 1921). 2) Hai Rau rice farmers by Léon Busy, 1922. [Albert Kahn Collection]

A dancer receiving her mokot (headdress) before a performance in Angkor Wat, 1921 [Collection Musée Albert Kahn, n. A36114 (amongst the photographs released online in July 2022)].

1) Gallery of the Buddhas, Angkor Wat. 2) The ponds at Angkor Wat. 2 autochrome photos by ​‘Busy’ illustrating François de Tessan, ​‘Les aspects intimes et pittoresques de l’Indochine’, L’Illustration 4155, 21 Oct. 1922: 379 – 85. Along Busy’s autochrome photos were watercolors by F. de Marliave. 

1) Gallery of the Buddhas, Angkor Wat. 2) The ponds at Angkor Wat. 2 autochrome photos by ​‘Busy’ illustrating François de Tessan, ​‘Les aspects intimes et pittoresques de l’Indochine’, L’Illustration 4155, 21 Oct. 1922: 379 – 85. Along Busy’s autochrome photos were watercolors by F. de Marliave. 

Note: Léon Busy’s work as a photographer and filmographer has been documented in A l’ombré d’Angkor, le Cambodge années vingt, texts by Marie Mattera-Corneloup, Jeanne Bausoleil ed., Boulogne, Musée Albert Kahn, 1992, 200 p.