The empire in color
Before there was such a thing as color film, a Russian photographer figured out a way to project the equivalent of color slides. His work can be seen in an online exhibition at the Library of Congress.
Off-topic for this blog? Bear with me.
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) was commissed by the government of the last tsar, Nicholas II, to travel the Russian Empire taking pictures of people, buildings, bridges, and other sights. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 overthrew the tsar, and Prokudin-Gorskii left for Paris the next year, taking many of his negatives with him.
When we have looked at too many sepia-tone photographs and old, herky-jerky black-and-white movies, we can almost forget that people a century ago lived in a colorful world too. You can see old Russia (and parts of Central Asia) in full color in these pictures.
Oh yes, the Russian royal family's personal physician was Dr. Sergei Botkin, who was gunned down along with them by the Communists in 1918. Dr. Botkin's son, Gleb, 17, would have been there too, except for a transportation foul-up that left him in another town.
Gleb Botkin eventually came to the United States and made a career as a commercial artist and writer. Although one branch of the Orthodox Church has canonized Tsar Nicholas II as a saint, the picture Botkin gives of him and his family in his memoir The Real Romanovs could be summarized as "nice people, but clueless."
In 1939 Botkin founded his own Pagan religious group, the Church of Aphrodite, first in Long Island, N.Y., and then in Charlottesville, Va., after he moved there. The "church" ended with his death in the mid-1960s, but at least one member, W. Holman Keith, was connected with subsequent Pagan bodies such as Feraferia, the Church of the Eternal Source, and the Church of All Worlds.
Before there was such a thing as color film, a Russian photographer figured out a way to project the equivalent of color slides. His work can be seen in an online exhibition at the Library of Congress.
Off-topic for this blog? Bear with me.
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) was commissed by the government of the last tsar, Nicholas II, to travel the Russian Empire taking pictures of people, buildings, bridges, and other sights. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 overthrew the tsar, and Prokudin-Gorskii left for Paris the next year, taking many of his negatives with him.
When we have looked at too many sepia-tone photographs and old, herky-jerky black-and-white movies, we can almost forget that people a century ago lived in a colorful world too. You can see old Russia (and parts of Central Asia) in full color in these pictures.
Oh yes, the Russian royal family's personal physician was Dr. Sergei Botkin, who was gunned down along with them by the Communists in 1918. Dr. Botkin's son, Gleb, 17, would have been there too, except for a transportation foul-up that left him in another town.
Gleb Botkin eventually came to the United States and made a career as a commercial artist and writer. Although one branch of the Orthodox Church has canonized Tsar Nicholas II as a saint, the picture Botkin gives of him and his family in his memoir The Real Romanovs could be summarized as "nice people, but clueless."
In 1939 Botkin founded his own Pagan religious group, the Church of Aphrodite, first in Long Island, N.Y., and then in Charlottesville, Va., after he moved there. The "church" ended with his death in the mid-1960s, but at least one member, W. Holman Keith, was connected with subsequent Pagan bodies such as Feraferia, the Church of the Eternal Source, and the Church of All Worlds.
posted by Chas S. Clifton at 1:22 PM Permalink
3 Comments:
FOLLOW UP: Maybe Mr. P-G was just doing things the Russian way, with large, heavy machines.
Since then, I have found a site with World War One French Army photographs.
Another French site details the French contribution to color photography.
You are right, the difference with color photographs is astounding. It is astounding to think everyone in these photos is long dead.
The Ryssian tsars desreved to be executed as they caused the deaths of a million central asians in theri revolts, and 500,000 German pows, and 100,000 Volga germans, saw Russia with a lower life expectancy than every part of britain, and immense poverty, they whipped people, for not agreeing with them, and sent them to Gulags, and oppreesed poles, to balts, under them 100,000 jews were killed in pogroms by ther russian army and 5000 beforer ww1, and 150,000 by royalist propganada, after ww1
Post a Comment
<< Home