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In January 1957 Joel Martin Halpern, a young American anthropologist, arrived together with his wife Barbara in Luang Prabang for a one year residence working for USAID. He later spent time also in Vientiane. His job was to lay the ground work for aid programs and he wrote many papers documenting information and statistics about the condition of Laos. In his free time however he took hundreds of high quality colour slide photographs of the town and its people. This collection now forms an invaluable record of how Luang Prabang looked just at the very beginning of the period of American involvement in Laos, before large inflows of American money changed the physical appearance of much of the town. Indeed some of his photos capture the early changes that American aid bought in the way of road building and general construction. But other photos capture aspects of daily life that are little changed to this day.
His entire photographic collection is now preserved online by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and can be accessed here. |
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Halpern worked with two cameras. His primary camera was a 35mm camera with colour slide film with which he created stunning photographs of the town and its people, images that captured the beauty that Luang Prabang is still famous for. He also used a black & white polaroid camera, which enabled him to take quick photographs that could be shown immediately to the people around him, helping him build a rapport with his subjects.
In the following pages I have gathered together Halpern's Luang Prabang photographs and where possible identified the location in the town where each photo was taken. Many buildings in the town remain unchanged to this day and I have cross-referenced many photos with the UNESCO Heritage Building Inventory (See here). For the 450+ photos where I have identified the location I have uploaded them to Google maps here
For ease of reference I have split the photographs into nine categories. Click on the images to below to access each part of the library.
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Joel M. Halpern's photographs are reproduced here under the terms of fair-use for educational purposes. Copyright remains with the original owner and his estate,