http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html
Very cool.
With the possible exception of the Great Plains, Russia may have the most ominous looking skies in the world.
Fascinating… the clothes, the faces, the architecture. Knowing as you view them the incredible hardship most of these individuals would endure made it even more poignant.
Great stuff, thanks!
Interesting method of getting color photography. I didn’t know such a thing was possible.
That is totally freakin awesome
No more hardship than any other people of similar class in any other country, surely.
Great link, thanks.
Album of 1910-vintage color photographs from Russia
There are a couple of other albums of color photos from that period and area collected by the same guy. Click on “more photos from russianempire” to see the list. (For some you need to be able to read Russian to figure out descriptions.)
Beautiful!
I only wish there were some images of the Baltics, so I could have a better picture of where my great-grandparents were from.
I’d only seen one of these before in another collection. Thank you.
Seeing as the younger people in those photos were looking forward to a world war in which many Russians were cannon fodder, a civil war, upheaval surrounding the early years of the Soviet regime, forced collectivization, mass murder and being cannon fodder in yet another world war, I’d say yeah, a lot of them were facing incredible hardships not to be experienced by comparable folks living in many other nations.
Great photos.
The folks at Damn Interesting had a great write-up on this stuff back in 2006.
The Library of Congress also has an impressive online exhibit with a lot more pictures not seen at the OP’s link, as well as a lot of explanation of what’s going on in each photo. They even have a searchable archive of all of Prokudin-Gorskii’s color photos, and there are a lot of them, like 2600.
My grandparents were born in Russia and Ukraine in 1912, so these photos are particularly relevant to me.
And to echo Jackmannii, my great-grandfather was arrested and murdered by the Communists, my grandfather was arrested by the same Communists and sent to fight as cannon-fodder, then fled with his wife and child to Germany before emigrating to Australia. He and his wife left behind a life as artists in Russia (he, a dancer; she, a painter) in order to survive in Australia on the income of a labourer. To me, that’s great hardship and doesn’t even touch on the scale of what happened during that time period.
Actually, the three-image method is far superior to the single, composite color film for long-term storage, since each color is a single monochrome negative, and black/white images deteriorate much less with time than color dyes. Some moving pictures were made with this method and can be re-processed just like new without much need for color adjustment. It’s just expensive and complex.
I sure would like to see how his camera worked. It’s obvious from the images of water that there was a long exposure and/or short delay between the separate image capture times.
Those photos sure are amazing to the detail, and most are perfectly registered.
The photos are beautiful, but I have to say the people look absolutely grim. Hardly a smile to be seen. Perhaps that was a convention of portraiture back in those days.
It’s amazing to me how much more “real” color photos are compared with black and white. It really brings home how, like us, they would consider their lives to be ordinary. I look at the sky and it is the same one I see. I look at the people going about their lives and, with obvious exceptions, they could be me and my family.
Fantastic, thank you.
If I had to guess, it had more to do with exposure time than anything. If you look at the second picture in the series, look at the water in the creek. The smoothness is a telltale sign of a long exposure - so if you have to sit for a 10 second exposure it was probably far more comfortable to not try to hold a smile.
Having your picture taken, especially as Joe Blow-sky peasant, was a really rare thing. It’d be a very important occasion, which means you would take it seriously (no smiling).
The images are so clear and sharp. It’s almost a bit unsettling to realize that those people are all dead now.
The guy in #8 – is that his hair?
The group of Jewish boys in #16 is adorable. You can tell which one is Joseph.
What is that on the wall behind the water-carrier in #24?
The picture at #26 does carry a certain sense of foreboding: “Rich noble’s factory, a few years before the revolution.”
That’s his hat.
A big ass bag of water. Made out of pig skin, maybe?
In Samarkand? More likely sheep skin.