Produkin-Gorskii: The Tsar's Russia - in colour

[Egan]

I first saw these a few months ago whilst looking for some old photgraphs of something or other, and I was completely blown away by them.

The photographs of Russian chemist and photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, show Russia on the eve of World War I and the coming of the revolution. From 1909-1912 and again in 1915, Prokudin-Gorskii travelled across the Russian Empire, documenting life, landscapes and the work of Russain people. His images were to be a photographic survey of the time. He travelled in a special train car transformed into a dark room to process his special process of creating color images, a technology that was in its infancy in the early 1900***8242;s. Prokudin-Gorskii left Russia in 1918, after the Russian Revolution had destroyed the Empire he spent years documenting. To learn more about the Prokudin-Gorskii, the process he used to create the color photographs, and see his collection, you can visit the Library of Congress, who purchased his glass negatives in 1948 after his death in 1944

Check them out:

http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured...rly-1900s/544/

And then have a look at the stuff the Library of Congress has put online. They are amazing, absoulutely amazing. They really do look like they could have been taken yesterday and have a sharpness to them that is quite phenomenol. I visited the new photography gallery at the Victoria and Albert in London a few weeks ago, but, brilliant as it was, it had nothing like these. I beleive there was a book released at some point. I'll have to see if I can find it.

[CCIP]

Yeah, always blows my mind to see history so clearly and ordinarily. I've seen these before and they're still great, still have a familiar sense to them but definitely clear of whole layers of Soviet-era culture that Russians are so used to.

It's actually pretty fascinating irrespective of culture. I found these equally incredible for example:

http://www.retronaut.co/2010/06/smiling-victorians/
http://www.retronaut.co/2011/10/victorians-smiling-ii/

[Sailor Steve]

Amazing pictures, all of them!

[geetrue]

Egan, you make subsim worth reading

[Egan]

Originally Posted by geetrue

Egan, you make subsim worth reading

Well, thank you!

I think I originally stumbled on these when I was looking for some Victorian Memento Mori one day. I found a huge bunch of them but, after about half a dozen, I found that I couldn't look at any more. They were just heartbreaking.

Actually, thinking about it, I also came across a site that had photographic portraits of veterans of the American War of Independence. They were all very old men, and they were taken in the mid 19th century.

But these are special, there is something about the colour than just reduces that remoteness in time and history and culture.

Somewhat fitting for the day Eve Arnold died.

[Schroeder]

Originally Posted by Egan

I think I originally stumbled on these when I was looking for some Victorian Memento Mori...

I wasn't even aware such things existed.

[Egan]

Originally Posted by Schroeder

I wasn't even aware such things existed.

They're fascinating but....Maybe my sensibilities are too modern. I understand the reasoning behind them but the reality is a whole different thing to grasp. Not my cup of tea.

[u crank]

Amazing, just amazing! Easy to get lost in these. Thanks for the heads up,Egan

[the_tyrant]

The color is amazing, not something you would expect from a photo from that period in time