No, color film did not exist in 1909, but chemist-turned-photojournalist Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) had pioneered a revolutionary method to document pre-Revolution Russian Empire and its multicultural surroundings. Using color-filtered plates of glass, he captured a red, a blue and a green channel of each of rivers, railroads, villages, churches of olde. Even more fascinatingly, we can look 100 years back in time on the faces of real peasants, factory workers, noblemen, soldiers, sailors and botanists. Peek into the past with these amazing scenes from 1909 through 1912, courtesy of the Library of Congress. The borders give it an extra magical touch, don’t they?
Photo credit: Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. Peasant girls. Courtesy Library of Congress
Comments (13)
These are fantastic. And I’d totally like to sit down and drink vodka with the dude in #13.
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Fantastic. Hard to believe it’s only a hundred years ago. And these people had no idea what kind of century they were in for.
[...] before the revolution, but aren’t satisfied with black and white photos? Well then, you owe Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii a debt of [...]
[...] before the revolution, but aren’t satisfied with black and white photos? Well then, you owe Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii a debt of [...]
Wonderful! But I wonder how the artist determined the colors used in, for example, #13. Guess? or something else?
My question is how long the live subjects had to sit or stand still for the photographer to get his 3 individual colors. But what a great collection of pictures.
“But I wonder how the artist determined the colors used”
He didn’t have to, he merged the plates of primary colors and came out with the actual colors.
I hope other photographers take up this hobby and that we see many more collections like Civil War etc.
Just to clarify, These were taken IN COLOR, not a rework.
Russians…
Kroatisches Küstenpatent
Flavorwire nous propose un joli travail artistique dédié aux livres. Une poignée d’artistes se sont mis récemment à réinventer les couvertures des livres classiques qui les ont le plus marqués.
That’s an interesting set of pictures – and wonderful too.
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