Conceived as an invitation to wander, Natures vivantes offers an immersive stroll, in text and images, through the gardens of Boulogne and Cap-Martin. The book reveals a little-known and unique part of the Albert Kahn Museum's collections, more often associated with the otherworldly visions of The Archives de la Planète. The images are not botanical documentation, but a completely new approach to the subject through autochromes, stereoscopic plates and films. These images reveal the secret life of plants, invisible to the naked eye, and question the power of life in plants. 

Philanthropist, globetrotter and collector, Albert Kahn was also a great lover of horticulture. His two residences, in Boulogne - now a museum - and Cap-Martin on the Riviera, were set amid gardens inspired by his distant travels and reflected his pacifist vision. Kahn invited photographers, operators and scientists to document them. The result is over 5,000 autochromes and about five hours of films, presented here in three bodies of work: Un paradis vegetal (A green paradise), Plantes animées (Lively plants) and Souvenir d'un jardin disparu (Souvenir of a lost garden), punctuated by several essays of contributors from a variety of disciplines: film historian, photography historian, gardener, writer, scientist, landscape gardener, philosopher, artist... together contributing a kaleidoscopic vision of these gardens.