Sometimes history is brought alive in an unexpected way ...... Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was a Russian aristocrat from pre-revolutionary Russia who invented his own colour picture technique (involving triple exposures on blue, red and green plates to create 'colour') ... while clever, it would not really ever take off because if any one moved inside the six seconds it took to take the shots, the the picture blurred. See the blue fingers on the self portrait.
At the request of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, armed only with a special pass, he toured the Empire and took thousands of pictures between 1909-1912. He created a unique record of all the peoples, landscapes, industries and buildings under the Russians control. They are now owned by the US Library of Congress.
These pictures are from the period 1909 - 1911 ...... Quite stunning.
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| Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii - self portait. |
At the request of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, armed only with a special pass, he toured the Empire and took thousands of pictures between 1909-1912. He created a unique record of all the peoples, landscapes, industries and buildings under the Russians control. They are now owned by the US Library of Congress.
These pictures are from the period 1909 - 1911 ...... Quite stunning.
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| Bureaucrat in Bukhara |
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| Emir Seyyid Mir Mohammed Alim Khan the Emir of Bukhara |
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| Jewish children with a teacher in Samarkand |
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| Kalganov family zlatoust workers |
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| Nikolaevskii Cathedral from southwest in Mozhaisk |
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| Peasants harvesting hay in 1909 |
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| Prisoners and Guard |
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| Prisoners in shackles |
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| Saint Nil Stolbenskii Monastery |
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| Sukhumi, Abkhazia and its bay |
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| Water-carrier in Samarkand |
