Color photographs of Trophim Gorsky. Color photographs of Tsarist Russia by Prokudin-Gorsky
The photographs from the early 1900s show the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and on the verge of revolution.
Photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky was one of the country's leading photographers at the beginning of the 20th century. The portrait of Tolstoy, taken in 1908, two years before the writer's death, gained wide popularity. It was reproduced on postcards, in large print media and in various publications, becoming the most famous work of Prokudin-Gorsky.
The picture in luxurious clothes depicts the last Bukharian emir - Seyid Mir Mohammed Alim Khan. Present Uzbekistan, approx. 1910 g.
The photographer traveled around Russia shooting in color in the early 1900s
An Armenian woman in national dress poses for Prokudin-Gorsky on a hillside near the city of Artvin (modern Turkey).
To reflect the scene in color, Prokudin-Gorsky took three shots, and each time he installed a different color filter on the lens. This meant that sometimes when objects moved, colors blurred and distorted, as in this photo.
The project to document the nation in color images was designed for 10 years. Prokudin-Gorsky planned to collect 10,000 photographs.
During the period from 1909 to 1912 and 1915, the photographer surveyed 11 regions, traveling in a government-provided railway carriage, which was equipped with a dark room.
Self-portrait of Prokudin-Gorsky against the background of the Russian landscape.
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky was born in 1863 into an aristocratic family in St. Petersburg, he studied chemistry and art. The access received from the tsar to the regions of Russia, which are forbidden to visit by ordinary citizens, allowed him to make unique shots, capturing people and landscapes from different parts of the Russian Empire.
The photographer managed to capture the scenes in color through the use of a three-color shooting technique, which allowed the audience to convey a vivid sense of life at that time. He took three shots: one with a red filter, one with a green filter, and the third with a blue one.
A group of Dagestani women are posing for a picture. Prokudin-Gorsky was accused of capturing bare faces.
Colored landscape in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.
Portrait of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy.
Isfandiyar Yurji Bahadur - Khan of the Russian protectorate of Khorezm (part of modern Uzbekistan).
Prokudin-Gorskiy began implementing his tricolor photography method after visiting Berlin and familiarizing himself with the work of the German photochemist Adolf Mite.
Due to the revolution in 1918, the photographer left his family in his homeland and went to Germany, where he married his laboratory assistant. In a new marriage, a daughter, Elka, was born. Then he moved to Paris and was reunited with his first wife, Anna Alexandrovna Lavrova and three adult children, with whom he founded a photo studio. Sergei Mikhailovich continued his photographic work and published in English-language photojournalism.
The studio, which he founded and bequeathed to his three adult children, was named Elka after his youngest daughter.
The photographer died in Paris in 1944, a month after the liberation of France from Nazi occupation.
Using his own method of shooting, Prokudin-Gorsky made a good showing and was appointed editor of the most important Russian photographic magazine - Amateur Photographer.
He was unable to complete his ten-year project to create 10,000 images. After the October Revolution, Prokudin-Gorsky left Russia forever.
By that time, according to experts, he had created 3,500 negatives, but many of them were confiscated and only 1902 were restored. The entire collection was bought by the US Library of Congress in 1948, and the digitized footage was published in 1980.
A group of Jewish children in bright coats with their teacher.
A beautiful and peaceful landscape in pre-revolutionary Russia.
Girl in a bright purple dress.
Overseer of the Chernihiv waterway
Parents with their three daughters are relaxing in a mowed field during sunset.
Master of art forging. This photograph was taken at the Kasli Metallurgical Plant in 1910.
View of the Nicholas Cathedral in Mozhaisk in 1911
Photographer (front right) on a railcar outside Petrozavodsk on the Murmansk Railroad along Lake Onega.
This image is particularly noticeable how difficult it was to capture a photo in color when subjects were unable to sit still. Colors washed out.
In from the history of these photographs. A certain man named Prokudin-Gorsky came up with the following thing: photograph objects 3 times through 3 filters - red, green and blue. It turned out 3 black and white photographs. The projection of the three plates had to be simultaneous. He used a small folding camera like the one designed by Adolf Meath. Three exposures of the same object, taken at approximately one second intervals, were required on the same glass plate 84–88 mm wide and 232 mm long. The plate changed position every time, and the image was captured through three different color filters. The subjects to be filmed had to be stationary, which was a big limitation.
The projector has also undergone changes. Prokudin-Gorsky improved the F.E. Iva created the apparatus according to his own drawings: three diamond-shaped prisms were fastened together, creating one combined prism. Thus, it was possible to focus all three colors on the screen.
The only thing he could do with all this at the time was to insert them into 3 different projectors, with red, green, and blue, respectively, and point the projectors to one screen. The result was a color image.
The photographs of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky (1863-1944) offer a vivid portrait of the lost world - the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the impending revolution. This includes images from medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia to the railways and factories of a growing industrial power and the daily life and work of Russia's diverse population.
P rokudin-Gorsky was born in Vladimir in 1863 and was a chemist by training. He devoted all his activities to the development of photography. He studied with renowned scientists in St. Petersburg, Berlin and Paris. As a result of his original research, Prokudin-Gorsky received patents for the production of color transparencies and the design of color films. In the early 1900s, Prokudin-Gorsky drew up a bold plan to conduct a photographic survey of the Russian Empire, which was supported by Tsar Nicholas II. In 1909, through the intermediary of the Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, who was the Honorary Chairman of the St. Petersburg Photographic Society, he received an audience with Tsar Nicholas II. The Tsar invites Prokudin-Gorsky to perform with a screening of transparencies in front of the Imperial Court in Tsarskoe Selo. When showing, Sergei Mikhailovich had to comment on the pictures, and he did it just dramatically. Towards the end of the demonstration, a delighted whisper was heard in the hall. At the end, the king shook his hand, the empress and the royal children congratulated him on his success.
The work of the most famous Russian photographer, inventor, teacher Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky has about two thousand glass color-separated negatives, capturing the centuries-old culture of the Russian Empire on the eve of grand shocks.
During the first 15 years of the 20th century, he implemented a grandiose project - color photography of the Russian Empire.
By 1906, Prokudin-Gorsky published several articles on the principles of color photography. By that time, he had perfected the new method so much, which guaranteed the same color sensitivity of the entire spectrum, that he could create color frames suitable for projection.
It was Prokudin-Gorskiy who, at the same time, developed a new method of transferring a color image: he shot objects three times - through 3 filters - red, green and blue. The result is 3 black and white positive plates.
To reproduce the resulting images, he used a three-section overhead projector with blue, red and green light. All 3 pictures were simultaneously projected onto the screen, and as a result, you could see a full color photo.
In 1909, Prokudin-Gorsky was already a well-known master and editor of the amateur photographer magazine. At this time, he finally manages to realize his dream of creating a photographic chronicle of the entire Russian Empire.
After listening to the advice of Grand Duke Mikhail, Prokudin-Gorsky tells about his plans to Nicholas II and, of course, hears words of support. For several years, specifically for travel in order to photographically document the life of the empire, the government allocated Prokudin-Gorsky a railway carriage equipped with everything necessary.
During his work on his grandiose project, Prokudin-Gorsky shot several thousand plates. During this period, the technology for displaying a color image on the screen has been worked out almost perfectly. Thus, a unique gallery of beautiful photographs was created.
After the death of Nicholas II, Prokudin-Gorsky, together with his collection - glass plates in 20 boxes - managed to travel first to Scandinavia, then to Paris. He lived in Nice in the 1920s. Sergei Mikhailovich was very glad that his works helped the young Russian generation abroad to understand what their homeland looks like.
The collection of photographic plates by Prokudin-Gorsky had to endure the repeated relocations of the Prokudin-Gorsky family and the German occupation of Paris.
In the late 1940s, the question was raised of publishing the first "History of Russian Art" under the general editorship of Igor Grabar, and supplying it with color illustrations.
In 1948, Marshall, a representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, purchased about 1,600 photographic plates from the Prokudins-Gorskys for $ 5,000. Thus, the plates ended up in the library of the US Congress.
Already in our time, the idea arose of how to scan and combine 3-plate photographs of Prokudin - Gorsky on a computer. This is how we all managed to bring the unique archive back to life.
There are things that are hard to believe, but they really were. In pursuit of our future, we do not always look back. Our ancestors performed unprecedented miracles, which not everyone knows about.
1910 year. On a hillside near Artvin (the territory of modern Turkey) a woman is posing for Prokudin-Gorsky in a national Armenian costume.
I propose to fill the huge gap and turn to the times of the early 20th century. It was then that the photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky, with the support of Emperor Nicholas II, made a photo review of the Russian Empire. Yes, what!
Prokudin-Gorsky photographed the area, people, architecture of the country using a special camera for photographs of his own design.
This wonderful camera was able to make three photographs in blue, green and red channels from three black and white photographs. After that the photographic plates were combined and a color image was obtained. To do this, it was necessary to insert photographic plates into three different projectors and direct them to the screen.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Prokudin-Gorsky took color photographs, and with high image quality.
I am sure that you are now looking at these photos and you think that all this is not true, and that in fact it is photoshop or, at worst, a modern fake antique. It's hard to believe that the photographs were taken before the First World War. But it is so.
I used materials from the Library of Congress to write this post. More details about Prokudin-Gorsky's works can be found at loc.gov/exhibits/empire.
1910 year. Kasli, artistic casting. From the album "Views of the Ural Mountains, Review of Industrial Areas, Russian Empire".
1910 year. Woman on the Sim River
1909 year. Chapel on the site where the city of Belozersk was founded
1910 year. Georgia, view of Tiflis (Tbilisi)
1910 year. Khorezm. Khan of the Russian protectorate Isfandiyar II Djurji Bahadur
Enlarged photo of Isfandiyar. Here he is 39 years old. Ruled Khorezm until his death in 1918
1910 year. Sim river bank, shepherd boy
1910 year. Hydroelectric power station in Yolotan of Turkmenistan. The photo shows alternators made in Hungary, installed inside the power unit of the power plant
1910 year. Dagestani women
1909 year. In the photo there is Pinkhus Karlinsky, 84 years old, the head of the Chernigov lock in 66 years of service
1910 year. Artvin (now Turkey)
This list of the most famous photographs of S.M. Prokudin-Gorsky was compiled by me almost 4 years ago, but since then the number of blog readers has increased by about 10 times, so it makes sense to repeat the post. However, I slightly updated the material (initially, eight images were considered).
The first place, of course, belongs to the portrait of Leo Tolstoy, which in 1908 was sold in large editions in the form of postcards, magazine inserts and wall posters:
And in Soviet times, this portrait was published in even larger circulations (publications in books and magazines). In 1978 he appeared on the cover of the main weekly of the USSR, the Ogonyok magazine with a circulation of over 2 million copies! This record will probably never be broken.
We will give the second place to the so-called "self-portrait", which adorns the article about Prokudin-Gorsky in Wikipedia.
The photo was pasted into the album with the caption "Along the Karolitskhali River".
Actually, there are two mistakes here. Firstly, the technology of three-color shooting did not allow making any "self-portraits" at that time, which means that one of the assistants (possibly one of the sons) was shooting.
Secondly, the widely spread title of the picture, as it has recently become known, is erroneous, just one of Sergei Mikhailovich's assistants confused the signature when pasted into the album. Indeed, is it possible to sit "along the river"? But the point, of course, is not this, but the fact that Prokudin-Gorsky is sitting on the bank of another river - Skuritskhali (a tributary of Karolitskhali). To understand this, it took several weeks of research work, in which, independently of each other, two local residents, residents of Batumi, participated. The original author's title of the picture is in the album - "On the Skuritskhali River. Study". Some kind of "left" picture with a waterfall was glued to it.
Third place - the famous portrait of the Emir of Bukhara, 1911:
The portrait is absolutely incomparable in color; no exhibition is complete without it.
Even avatars based on the following appeared:
Fourth place - "Peasant girls". [d. Topornya], which differs, like the previous one, by the incomparable brightness of colors.
This photo fell in love with two directors at once: Leonid Parfyonov, who dedicated a separate plot to him in the film "The Color of the Nation" and a Dutch one named Ben van Leeshout, who made the original poster for the film "Inventory of the Motherland" out of it:
In original:
Fifth place - a photo with Prokudin-Gorsky on a railcar near Petrozavodsk, 1916: 
There were craftsmen who animated this image! The railroad car runs smoothly along the rails and if you add a suitable sound sequence, you will get an excellent clip :-)
By the way, a couple of such animations were included in the last documentary about Prokudin-Gorsky - Russia in Color (director: Vladimir Meletin, 2010).
Sixth place - "View of the monastery from the Svetlitsa". [Monastery of St. Nile Stolbensky, Lake Seliger]. 1910:
This photograph became the emblem of the American exhibition "The Empire That Was Russia" in 2001, which sparked the awakening of mass interest in the legacy of the pioneer of color photography.
The view is really mesmerizing with its splendor.
Seventh place - a snapshot of a family of Russian settlers in the Grafovka village of the Mugan steppe:
The picture is widely known for the reason that it adorns the cover of the very first album of Prokudin-Gorsky's photographs, ed. Robert Allshaus, published in the USA in 1980 (Allshouse, Robert H. (ed.) Photographs for the Tsar: The Pioneering Color Photography of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii Commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II. - Doubleday, 1980).
Eighth place - a photo with participants in the construction of the Murmansk railway. on the pier in Kem-port. It became widely known thanks to its placement on the dust jacket of Veinikov's first (and so far only) album "Russian Empire in Color":
Ninth place - another photograph of Prokudin-Gorsky, this time, on the famous Karelian waterfall Kivach, sung by Gavrila Derzhavin:
The photo was taken out on the cover of the album, ed. S. Garanina, published in 2006.
It is rather difficult to get the 10th place, because there are many worthy contenders.
Maybe the masterpiece Lunch at the Mow?
According to some reports, a reproduction of this particular photograph hung in Prokudin-Gorsoky's room until his death.
It is interesting to know the opinion of readers, what pictures of Prokudin-Gorsky do they consider famous?
