These color photographs were all taken in the Russian Empire between 1909 and 1918.
Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii was a Russian photographer born in 1863. After studying chemistry with Mendeleev and later with Adolf Miethe - one of the crucial figures in the invention of color photography - Gorskii started developing his own techniques and processes of color photography, giving it a quality that even impresses even today.
In 1909, he convinced the tsar Nicolas II to send him on a trip across the Russian Empire, to document its impressive diversity. It was a 10-year project, during which Gorskii took over 10 000 pictures, and it ended up outlasting the tsar himself, and the Empire for that matter, as the October Revolution swept away the monarchy. In 1918, he emigrated to Paris, where he died in 1944.
The image archive of 1902 negatives which were left was bought by the Library of Congress a few years after the artist's death, and was put online in 2004. You can find it
here.
Prokuda-Gorskii's most famous photo is of Leo Tolstoy, dated 1908.
But I prefer this monumental, megalomaniac and modest project of documenting
Imperial Russia, which at the time was
larger than the USSR ever came to be. The diversity of the people, and the shockingly
modern colors of their portraits, make them impossible to forget. They are our contemporaries, now that they stopped hiding between the unfocused black-and-whiteness.
They are almost
too present.
Austrian (probably meaning also Polish and of other origins) prisoners somewhere in Russia. It's really worth seeing a high-resolution image.
Here he is, Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii. In a landscape that is (eerily?) ours.
PS. The amazing color bars that appear on some of the pictures are the result of Prokudin-Gorskii's ingenious process, which consisted in taking three subsequent, monochromatic photographs, one with a green filter, one with blue and one with red. He then superimposed the three projections using lamps with a corresponding filter system. I adore these frames, unfortunately some of the images needed additional computer editing (by the Library of Congress) and in this version were cropped.
You can find an extended biography of Gorskii here.
Little Turbo just turned 8 weeks old!
We begin border collie puppy classes
The wild flowers don't come out here until the fall.
This little guy is not only unbearably cute
Southwark, London
Turbo doing the "pancake" position.
Ah puppy butts!
Our little puppy is finally home &
I tried uploading a little video I made today
I had to temporarily say good-bye
I can hardy contain myself from the excitement
My dad with his grandpa Abraham.
Being goofy with his baby cousin.
Looking groovy in the 70s.
Watercolor & acrylic ink on paper. 9 x 12 inches
I love this stage, with just a couple of colors in.
Sometimes I'm just tempted to leave it like that.
But then I just go for it.
And Voila!
These color photographs were all taken in the Russian Empire between 1909 and 1918.
Austrian (probably meaning also Polish and of other origins) prisoners somewhere in Russia. It's really worth seeing a high-resolution image.
PS. The amazing color bars that appear on some of the pictures are the result of Prokudin-Gorskii's ingenious process, which consisted in taking three subsequent, monochromatic photographs, one with a green filter, one with blue and one with red. He then superimposed the three projections using lamps with a corresponding filter system. I adore these frames, unfortunately some of the images needed additional computer editing (by the Library of Congress) and in this version were cropped.
Taken yesterday afternoon.
Peek at a new watercolor I'm working on.
I'll watercolor it later tonight.
