Photos of Prokudin Gorsky in high resolution. Color photographs of Tsarist Russia by Prokudin-Gorsky
Where did color come from a hundred years ago? How was it done?
After all, quite recently - 50-60 years ago, a color photo was not exactly exotic, but extremely rare. Still in my memory are pseudo-colored painted pictures.
A talented chemist, enthusiastic photographer, graduate of the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, Prokudin-Gorsky by 1906 published a number of articles on the principles of color photography. During this period, he so improved the new method, which ensured the same color sensitivity of the entire spectrum, that he could already take color pictures suitable for projection. At the same time, he also developed his own method for transmitting a color image, based on the division of colors into three components. He shot objects 3 times through 3 filters - red, green and blue. It turned out 3 black-and-white positive plates.
For the subsequent reproduction of the image, he used a three-section slide projector with blue, red and green light. All three images from three plates were projected onto the screen at the same time, as a result of which those present had the opportunity to see full-color images. By 1909, already a well-known photographer and editor of the "Amateur Photographer" magazine, Sergei Mikhailovich had the opportunity to fulfill his old dream - to compile a photographic chronicle of the Russian Empire.
On the recommendation of Grand Duke Michael, he sets out his plan to Nicholas II and receives the most ardent support. Over the next few years, the government provided Prokudin-Gorsky with a specially equipped railway car for trips with the aim of photographically documenting the life of the empire.
During this work, several thousand plates were shot. The technology for displaying a color image on the screen has been developed.
And most importantly, a gallery of beautiful photographs has been created, unprecedented in quality and volume. And for the first time, such a series of images was decomposed into colors. Then only for the purpose of output using a slide projector on the screen.
The further fate of these photographic plates is also unusual. After the death of Nicholas II, Prokudin-Gorsky managed to go first to Scandinavia, then to Paris, taking with him almost all the results of many years of work - glass plates in 20 boxes.
"In the 1920s, Prokudin-Gorsky lived in Nice, and the local Russian community got the precious opportunity to view his paintings in the form of color slides. Sergei Mikhailovich was proud that his work helped the young Russian generation on foreign soil to understand and remember how she looked their lost homeland - in its most real form, with the preservation of not only color, but also its spirit.
The collection of photographic plates survived numerous family moves and the German occupation of Paris.
In the late 1940s, the question arose of publishing the first "History of Russian Art" under the general editorship of Igor Grabar. Then - about the possibility of supplying it with color illustrations. It was then that the translator of this work, Princess Maria Putyatina, remembered that at the beginning of the century, her father-in-law, Prince Putyatin, introduced to Tsar Nicholas II a certain professor Prokudin-Gorsky, who developed a method of color photography by color separation. According to her, the sons of the professor lived in exile in Paris and were the custodians of a collection of his photographs.
In 1948, Marshall, a representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, purchased about 1,600 photographic plates from the Prokudin-Gorskys for $5,000. Since then, the plates have been kept in the US Library of Congress for many years.
Recently, only someone came up with the idea to try to scan and combine 3-plate photographs of Prokudin - Gorsky on a computer. And almost a miracle happened - it seemed that the images lost forever came to life.
Dedicated to lovers of extended dynamic ranges, and indeed color photos ...
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky spent his childhood in the Prokudin-Gorsky family estate Funikova Gora. According to family tradition, he studied at the Alexander Lyceum, but this is not confirmed by documents. He graduated from the Technological Institute in St. Petersburg, where he attended Mendeleev's lectures. Then he continued his studies as a chemist in Berlin and Paris. Collaborated with famous chemists and inventors: Momene and Mite. Together with them he was engaged in the development of promising methods of color photography.
On December 13, 1902, Prokudin-Gorsky for the first time announced the creation of color transparencies using the method of three-color photography, and in 1905 he patented his sensitizer, which is significantly superior in quality to similar developments by foreign chemists, including the Mite sensitizer. The composition of the new sensitizer made the silver bromide plate equally sensitive to the entire color spectrum.
self-portrait
At the beginning of the 20th century, multilayer color photographic materials did not yet exist, so Prokudin-Gorsky used black-and-white photographic plates (which he sensitized according to his own recipes) and a camera of his own design (its exact device is unknown; it probably looked like a camera system of a German chemist - professor Mitya). Through color filters of blue, green and red, three quick shots of the same scene were taken in succession, after which three black-and-white negatives were obtained, one above the other on one photographic plate. From this triple negative, a triple positive was made (probably by contact printing). To view such photographs, a projector with three lenses located in front of three frames on a photographic plate was used. Each frame was projected through a filter of the same color as the one through which it was shot. When three images (red, green and blue) were added together, a full-color image was obtained on the screen.
The composition of the new sensitizer patented by Prokudin-Gorsky made the silver bromide plate equally sensitive to the entire color spectrum. Peterburgskaya Gazeta reported in December 1906 that, by improving the sensitivity of his plates, the researcher intended to demonstrate "snapshots in natural colors, which is a great success, since no one has received it yet." Perhaps the projections of Prokudin-Gorsky's photograph were the world's first slide demonstrations.
Prokudin-Gorsky contributed to two areas of improvement in color photography that existed at that time: the way to reduce shutter speed (according to his method, Prokudin-Gorsky managed to make exposure in a second possible); and, secondly, an increase in the ability to replicate the image. He also speaks at international congresses in applied chemistry.
Pictures are taken not on three different plates, but on one, in a vertical arrangement, which allows you to speed up the shooting process by shifting the plate.
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 updated the material a bit (initially, eight pictures were considered).
The first place, of course, goes to the portrait of Leo Tolstoy, which, back in 1908, was sold in large numbers in the form of postcards, magazine inserts and wall posters:
And in Soviet times, this portrait was published in even larger editions (publications in books and magazines). In 1978, he appeared on the cover of the main weekly magazine of the USSR, the Ogonyok magazine, with a circulation of more than 2 million copies! This record will probably never be broken.
Second place will be given to the so-called "self-portrait", which adorns the Wikipedia article about Prokudin-Gorsky.
The picture is pasted into an album with the caption "Along the Karolitskhali River".
Actually, there are two mistakes here. Firstly, the technology of three-color shooting did not allow then to take any "self-portraits", which means that one of the assistants (perhaps one of the sons) was shooting.
Secondly, the widely spread name of the picture, as it has recently become known, is erroneous, it's just that one of Sergei Mikhailovich's assistants mixed up the signature when pasted into the control album. In fact, is it possible to sit "on the river"? But, of course, this is not the point, but the fact that Prokudin-Gorsky sits on the banks of another river - the Skuritskhali (a tributary of the Karolishali). To understand this, it took several weeks of research work, in which two local residents, Batumi residents, independently participated. The original author's name of the picture is in the album - "On the Skuritskhali River. Etude". 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, not a single exhibition can do without it.
Even avatars based on them appeared:
Fourth place - picture "Peasant Girls". [d. Topornya], which differs, like the previous one, in the boundless brightness of colors.
This photo fell in love with two directors at once: Leonid Parfyonov, who dedicated a separate story to it in the film "The Color of the Nation" and a Dutch director named Ben van Lieshout, who made the original poster for the film "Inventory of the Motherland" out of it:
In original:
Fifth place - a picture with Prokudin-Gorsky on a railcar near Petrozavodsk, 1916: 
There were craftsmen who animated this image! The trolley runs smoothly along the rails, and if you add a suitable sound range, you get a great clip :-)
By the way, a couple of such animations were included in the latest 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 "Empire that was Russia" in 2001, which began the awakening of mass interest in the legacy of the pioneer of color photography.
The view is truly breathtaking in its splendor.
Seventh place - a picture of a family of Russian immigrants in the village Grafovka, Mugan steppe:
The picture is widely known for the reason that it adorns the cover of the very first album of pictures by Prokudin-Gorsky, ed. Robert Allshouse, 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 the participants in the construction of the Murmansk railway. on the pier in Kem-port. She became widely known thanks to her placement on the dust jacket of the first (and so far the only) album of the Veinikovs "The Russian Empire in Color":
Ninth place - another photo portrait of Prokudin-Gorsky, this time at the famous Karelian Kivach waterfall, sung by Gavrila Derzhavin:
The picture was placed on the cover of the album under the editorship of. S. Garanina, published in 2006
Deciding on the 10th place is quite difficult, because. there are many worthy contenders.
Maybe the masterpiece "Lunch on the lawn"?
According to some reports, a reproduction of this particular photograph hung in Prokudin-Gorsky's room until his death.
It is interesting to know the opinion of readers, which pictures of Prokudin-Gorsky do they consider famous?
Rare color photographs of Prokudin-Gorsky (70 photos)
Having recently accidentally stumbled upon a colorful photograph of an old Sart man on the net, I did not attach much importance to the fact that the photograph was in color. Well, a photograph is like a photograph. Some old man in a bathrobe, no different from the refugees from Tajikistan-Afghanistan, who often appear recently on TV screens, and even on the streets of our city. Photographer Prokudin-Gorsky.
Soon, this surname surfaced again during a conversation on the network in a conversation about the virtual library of the US Congress. Hurrying to visit the website of the Library of Congress, I spent the rest of the night online, downloading file after file of amazing pictures of the life of the Russian Empire, captured in color by photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky at the beginning of the last century.
Interested primarily in photographs from the Central Asian cycle, taken in 1911, I involuntarily looked through dozens of photographs in search of the necessary material. Gradually passed the shock because these are COLOR photographs of the early 20th century. I saw animated illustrations of Russian classics. Magnificent scenery. A series of ethnographic photographs depicting representatives of many peoples of the empire. Household sketches, industrial pictures of the pores of young Russian capitalism.
Looking through slide after slide, I felt a change in my understanding of pre-revolutionary Russia. She turned out to be somewhat different than she saw from the books she read, the films she saw. Books make the imagination work - and it is subjective. Old photographs are usually of such poor quality that they seem dead, contrived. Films in general are a staged thing, and there were practically no documentary films at that time. The photographs of Prokudin-Gorsky captured full-color paintings from real life. Later I read a statement by Sergei Mikhailovich about the contribution of photography to the cause of education: "Memory, supported visually, thanks to an interestingly presented subject, will far surpass our usual ways of remembering."
And yet where did the color come from a hundred years ago?
How was it done?
After all, quite recently - 30-40 years ago, a color photo was exotic. Still in my memory are pseudo-colored colorized pictures ...
A talented chemist, enthusiastic photographer, graduate of the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, Prokudin-Gorsky by 1906 published a number of articles on the principles of color photography. During this period, he so improved the new method, which ensured the same color sensitivity of the entire spectrum, that he could already take color pictures suitable for projection. At the same time, he also developed his own method for transmitting a color image, based on the division of colors into three components. He shot objects 3 times through 3 filters - red, green and blue. It turned out 3 black-and-white positive plates.
For the subsequent reproduction of the image, he used a three-section slide projector with blue, red and green light. All three images from three plates were projected onto the screen at the same time, as a result of which those present had the opportunity to see full-color images. By 1909, already a well-known photographer and editor of the "Amateur Photographer" magazine, Sergei Mikhailovich had the opportunity to fulfill his old dream - to compile a photographic chronicle of the Russian Empire.
On the recommendation of Grand Duke Michael, he sets out his plan to Nicholas II and receives the most ardent support. Over the next few years, the government provided Prokudin-Gorsky with a specially equipped railway car for trips with the aim of photographically documenting the life of the empire.
During this work, several thousand plates were shot. The technology for displaying a color image on the screen has been developed.
And most importantly, a gallery of beautiful photographs has been created, unprecedented in quality and volume. And for the first time, such a series of images was decomposed into colors. Then only for the purpose of output using a slide projector on the screen.
The further fate of these photographic plates is also unusual. After the death of Nicholas II, Prokudin-Gorsky managed to go first to Scandinavia, then to Paris, taking with him almost all the results of many years of work - glass plates in 20 boxes.
"In the 1920s, Prokudin-Gorsky lived in Nice, and the local Russian community got the precious opportunity to view his paintings in the form of color slides. Sergei Mikhailovich was proud that his work helped the young Russian generation on foreign soil to understand and remember how she looked their lost homeland - in its most real form, with the preservation of not only color, but also its spirit.
The collection of photographic plates survived both the numerous relocations of the Prokudin-Gorsky family and the German occupation of Paris.
In the late 1940s, the question arose of publishing the first "History of Russian Art" under the general editorship of Igor Grabar. Then - about the possibility of supplying it with color illustrations. It was then that the translator of this work, Princess Maria Putyatina, remembered that at the beginning of the century, her father-in-law, Prince Putyatin, introduced to Tsar Nicholas II a certain professor Prokudin-Gorsky, who developed a method of color photography by color separation. According to her, the sons of the professor lived in exile in Paris and were the custodians of a collection of his photographs.
In 1948, Marshall, a representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, purchased about 1,600 photographic plates from the Prokudin-Gorskys for $5,000. Since then, the plates have been kept in the US Library of Congress for many years.
Recently, only someone came up with the idea to try to scan and combine 3-plate photographs of Prokudin - Gorsky on a computer. And almost a miracle happened - it seemed that the images lost forever came to life.
Author Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky
In from the history of these photos. A certain person by the name of Prokudin-Gorsky came up with such a thing: to 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 Mieth. Three exposures of the same object were required, taken approximately one second apart, onto the same glass plate 84–88 mm wide and 232 mm long. The plate changed position each time, and the image was captured through three different color filters. The objects being filmed had to be stationary, which was a big limitation.
The projector has also undergone changes. Prokudin-Gorsky improved the model of 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 put them into 3 different projectors, with red, green, and blue respectively, and point the projectors to the same screen. It turned out a color image.
The photographs of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky (1863-1944) offer a vivid portrait of a lost world - the Russian Empire on the eve of the First World War and the impending revolution. This includes images from the medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia, to the railroads and factories of a growing industrial power, and the daily life and work of Russia's diverse population.
Rokudin-Gorsky was born in Vladimir in 1863 and was a chemist by training. He devoted all his activity to the development of photography. He studied with famous 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 devised a bold plan to conduct a photographic survey of the Russian Empire, which received the support of Tsar Nicholas II. In 1909, through the intermediary of 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 a display of slides in front of the Imperial Court in Tsarskoe Selo. During the show, Sergei Mikhailovich had to comment on the pictures, and he did it simply dramatically. By the end of the demonstration, an admiring 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.
