(Above Image Copyrighted by Musee Albert Kahn)
Albert Khan was a french banker and one of the richest men in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. He set out on an ambitious project to document the people of the world, for the people of the world. He ended up with a collection of roughly 72,000 color autochromes taken from 1908 – 1931. Because they are wet plates they were extremely hard to reproduce and share the work in its true beauty.
Check out the bookhere. There are also a couple of parts of the documentary by the BBC floating around YouTube which are definitely worth a watch.
Thanks to Rich Bowen for telling me about this, it blew my mind as some of these people in the photos where born in the 19th century!