Novaya Ladoga
The color photographs of the people and landscapes of pre-revolutionary Russia by a pioneer of color photography Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) are amazing!
S.M. Prokudin-Gorskii
Rostov the Great
Zlatoust
The multilayer color photographic materials did not exist in the early twentieth century, for the color filming and viewing an Adolf Miethe’s technology was using. It was a consistent method of photographing an object through the filters of red, blue and green colors, after that the results fixed as black-and-white images on glass with subsequent staining of the appropriate color. The color image had been recombined by passing light through filtered lanterns on the screen.
The mechanism of camera is unknown, probably, the photographer used the camera which the prism and three-color filters.
The war and revolution did not allow to finish him his job. In 1918 Prokudin-Gorskii left the Russia. He died in Paris in 1943. In 1948, the 1903 plate with a triple image were sold to the Library of Congress, and perhaps because of this have been preserved and become a world heritage.
Village Grafovka. Peasant Family
Three Generations
Members of Railway Construction
Railway
Etude
It is hard to believe that these bright, vivid images of the highest quality were made a hundred years ago. But more impressive is special spirit – the spirit of equilibrium and stability that artist sent us via the character types, the landscapes saturated by air and the faraway prospect full of light.
MORE: boston.com | Russia in color, a century ago
