With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He was a Russian chemist and photographer, one of the first to use color photography. He became well-known for taking a color photograph of Leo Tolstoy. He is also supposed to have taken color photographs of Nicholas II’s children, but the negatives have been lost, and are thought to have been destroyed in the revolution… He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time – when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948.
By The Boston Globe Photo by Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii
An Armenian woman in national costume poses for Prokudin-Gorskii on a hillside near Artvin (in present day Turkey), circa 1910Self-portrait on the Karolitskhali River, ca. 1910. Prokudin-Gorskii in suit and hat, seated on rock beside the Karolitskhali River, in the Caucasus Mountains near the seaport of Batumi on the eastern coast of the Black SeaYoung peasant girls near the town of Kirillov, Russia, along the Sheksna River. Sometime between 1909-1915A chapel sits on the site where the city of Belozersk was founded in ancient times, photographed in 1909A man and woman pose in Dagestan, ca. 1910Factory in Kyn, Russia, belonging to Count S.A. Stroganov, 1912Russian children sit on the side of a hill near a church and bell tower near White Lake, in Russia, 1909Emir Seyyid Mir Mohammed Alim Khan, the Emir of Bukhara, seated holding a sword in Bukhara, (present-day Uzbekistan), ca. 1910A boy leans on a wooden gatepost in 1910. From the album “Views in the Ural Mountains, survey of industrial area, Russian Empire”A metal truss bridge on stone piers, part of the Trans-Siberian Railway, crossing the Kama River near Perm, Ural Mountains Region, ca. 1910Nomadic Kirghiz on the Golodnaia Steppe in present-day Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, ca. 1910View of Tiflis (Tblisi), Georgia from the grounds of Saint David Church, ca. 1910
Isfandiyar Jurji Bahadur, Khan of the Russian protectorate of Khorezm (Khiva, now a part of modern Uzbekistan), full-length portrait, seated outdoors, ca. 1910A Georgian woman poses for a photograph, ca. 1910A group of women in Dagestan, ca. 1910A general view of Sukhumi, Abkhazia and its bay, seen sometime around 1910 from Cherniavskii MountainA boy sits in the court of Tillia-Kari mosque in Samarkand, present-day Uzbekistan, ca. 1910General view of Artvin (now in Turkey) from the small town of Svet, ca. 1910Pinkhus Karlinskii, eighty-four years old with sixty-six years of service. Supervisor of Chernigov floodgate, part of the Mariinskii Canal system. Photo taken in 1909General view of the Nikolaevskii Cathedral from southwest in Mozhaisk in 1911A switch operator poses on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, near the town of Ust Katav on the Yuryuzan River in 1910Laying concrete for the dam’s sluice, 1912. Workers and supervisors pose for a photograph amid preparations for pouring cement for sluice dam foundation across the Oka River near BeloomutSart woman in purdah in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, ca. 1910. Until the Russian revolution of 1917, “Sart” was the name for Uzbeks living in KazakhstanGeneral view of the wharf at Mezhevaya Utka, 1912Peasants harvesting hay in 1909. From the album “Views along the Mariinskii Canal and river system, Russian Empire”Prokudin-Gorskii rides along on a handcar outside Petrozavodsk on the Murmansk railway along Lake Onega near Petrozavodsk in 1910A water-carrier in Samarkand (present-day Uzbekistan), ca. 1910A dog rests on the shore of Lake Lindozero in 1910. From the album “Views along the Murmansk Railway, Russian Empire”A group of Jewish children with a teacher in Samarkand, (in modern Uzbekistan), ca. 1910
