marcia’s musings

The emir of bukhara, 1911 (c) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

Just came across the work of the Russian photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944), who appears to have pioneered the use of colour photography in documenting the Russian Empire from 1905-1915; on Wikipedia, it says “…his ultimate goal was to educate the schoolchildren of Russia with his ‘optical colour projections’ of the vast and diverse history, culture, and modernization of the empire.”

Flowers in a vase, 1905-1915 (c) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. Demonstrates the use of 3 negative plates to create a composite colour image.

His photographs are quite beautiful, images of architecture, people at work, ethnic diversity; he also produced the only known colour photograph of Leo Tolstoy. The US Library of Congress now owns all the negative plates known to exist (bought for less than $5000) and you can view them online here or on a Russian site here.

Its quite strange to see images of that era in colour as my mind is so trained to envision those years in black & white or sepia. I would love to see some early colour photographs from America or other parts of Europe – any leads?

A stork (a scene in bukhara), 1911 (c) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

Tolstoy, 1908 (c) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

- London, UK, 15 degrees Celsius, clear night, listening to ‘Un Gaou Oran’ by 113 & Magic System