 TSARIST RUSSIA IN COLOUR: Historic Images by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky
Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky slideshow, Tsarist Russia in colour
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Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky was an innovator in photography, a pioneer in colour, and his pictures preserve a Russia long gone – the pre-revolutionary land of empire. His images captured more than landscapes and monasteries: Uzbek prisoners in a provincial jail, young Russian peasant women, and Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war. His photography on his long trips by train capture a world lost to swift and monumental change. A century after Prokudin-Gorsky became a pioneer in colour photography, we are finally able to view his compelling body of work. His unique images of Russia on the eve of revolution – recorded on glass plates – were bought by the Library of Congress in 1948 from his heirs. A new exhibit using digital technology finally brings this work to a general audience. Born in Murom, Vladimir Province, in 1863, and educated as a chemist, Prokudin-Gorsky devoted himself to the advancement of photography.
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He studied with noted scientists in St Petersburg, Berlin and Paris. His own research yielded patents for producing colour film slides and for projecting colour films. He used a camera that took a series of three pictures in sequence, each through a different-coloured filter. By projecting all three pictures, he could reconstruct the vivid colour of the scene. He travelled around Russia by train, with a railway carriage darkroom provided by Czar Nicholas II and permits that granted him access to restricted areas. These privileges allowed Prokudin-Gorsky to freely document the Russian Empire from 1907 through to 1915. Prokudin-Gorsky left Russia in 1918, travelling first to Norway and England before settling in France. By then, the czar and his family had been murdered and the empire that Prokudin-Gorsky so carefully documented had been destroyed.
Source: Rossiyskaya Gazeta
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