Pre-revolutionary Russia in color photographs by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky. Photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky

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

Photographs from the early 1900s show the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and on the threshold of revolution.

Photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky was one of the country's leading photographers in the early 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 major print media, and in various publications, becoming Prokudin-Gorsky's most famous work.

The last Emir of Bukhara, Seyid Mir Mohammed Alim Khan, is depicted in luxurious clothes. Current Uzbekistan, ca. 1910

The photographer traveled around Russia shooting in color in the early 1900s.

An Armenian woman in national costume poses for Prokudin-Gorsky on a hillside near the city of Artvin (modern Turkey).

To reflect the scene in color, Prokudin-Gorsky took three frames, and each time he installed a different color filter on the lens. This meant that sometimes when objects moved, the colors were washed out 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.

Between 1909 and 1912 and in 1915, the photographer explored 11 regions, traveling in a government-provided railroad car that was equipped with a dark room.

Self-portrait of Prokudin-Gorsky against the backdrop 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 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 was able to capture the scenes in color by using 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 green, and one with blue.

A group of Dagestan women pose for a picture. Prokudin-Gorsky was accused of capturing uncovered faces.

Colored landscape in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century.

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy.

Isfandiyar Yurji Bahadur - Khan of the Russian protectorate of Khorezm (part of modern Uzbekistan).

Prokudin-Gorsky began to implement his method of three-color photography after he visited Berlin and got acquainted with the work of the German photochemist Adolf Mite.

Because of 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. He then moved to Paris and reunited with his first wife, Anna Aleksandrovna Lavrova, and three adult children, with whom he founded a photography studio. Sergei Mikhailovich continued his photographic work and published in English-language photo magazines.

The studio, which he founded and bequeathed to his three adult children, was named Elka in honor of 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 proved himself well and was appointed editor of the most important Russian photographic magazine - "Amateur Photographer".

He failed to complete his ten-year project of taking 10,000 shots. 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 1,902 were restored. The entire collection was purchased by the US Library of Congress in 1948, and the digitized footage was published in 1980.

A group of Jewish children in colorful coats with their teacher.

A beautiful and peaceful landscape in pre-revolutionary Russia.

A girl in a bright purple dress.

Overseer of the Chernihiv waterway

Parents with three daughters are resting in the field on the mowing at the time of sunset.

Art forging master. 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 Railway along Lake Onega.

This image especially shows how difficult it was to capture a photo in color when the subjects couldn't sit still. Colors washed out.

I recently made a selection of photographs of Prokudin-Gorsky for my English-language blog. Let it hang here and then, once the work has been done. The only thing I don't have enough strength for is to remake the signatures in Russian. Forgive me, but the signatures will be in English. But in Russian, I will add a small accompanying text.

Everyone seems to have heard about Prokudin-Gorsky, especially after Parfenov's film "The Color of the Nation" (it was interesting, of course, to observe the hype around what has long been known). And I have not met good selections of photographs of one of the first in the world, by the way, color photographers. It is clear that Sergei Mikhailovich was primarily a chemist. However, he devoted so many years to his beloved work that over time he began to get good pictures, and not just a fixation of reality.

If we talk about history, then formally Prokudin-Gorsky was not the first photographer to shoot in color. At a minimum, before him were James Clark Maxwell, Gabriel Lipman, Frederic Ivis, Hermann Vogel, Louis Ducos du Hauron, Charles Cros, John Jouley, and in parallel with him Rudolf Fischer, George Eastman, Leopold Manne, Leopold Godowsky, the brothers Lumiere and Adolf Mitya, whom Sergei Mikhailovich considered his teacher and from whom he borrowed the design of the camera that he then improved.

However, none of these people left a photographic legacy, almost all of them were primarily scientists, chemists, physicists and discoverers. They created the theory of color separation, developed and improved the technology, discovered sensibilisers, photosensitive plates and chemicals. But none of them took pictures.

Prokudin-Gorsky not only improved the achievements of his predecessors from a technological point of view (he has many chemical inventions to his credit), but also took more than 4,000 photographs in different parts of the world. Unfortunately, due to the events of 1917, a little less than 2,000 plates have survived to our time, and they have been preserved solely due to the fact that they were taken out of Russia and are currently in the US Library of Congress.

When they show photographs of Prokudin-Gorsky, most often they are talking about photographs of Russia. Not everyone knows that in addition, Sergei Mikhailovich filmed in Ukraine, Belarus, in the territories of modern Georgia and Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Latvia, Finland, France, Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, Italy and Austria. But most of the photographs that have come down to us are really taken within the territory of what was then Russia.

Usually collections of photographs by Prokudin-Gorsky consist of landscape pictures and attract the attention of lovers of history rather than photography. There are special sites where people study the legacy they left, find the places where the photos were taken, take a picture from the same angle and create a library of comparisons "100 years later". All this is probably very curious, but personally I have never been interested. More precisely, interest in postcards is fading rather quickly, it is worth looking at a couple of dozen. But I can look at photographs of people for a very long time, and return to them many times.

Despite the fact that Prokudin-Gorsky does not have so many photographs with people, they are. In this selection of 64 photos, I decided to collect the best of them, plus I added just a couple of landscapes to complement the overall picture. All photos are in fairly good quality (1800 px on the long side). Some I corrected for color, but mostly I was satisfied with reproductions from the site www.prokudin-gorsky.org.

2.

1907, Uzbekistan. Chained prisoners, Bukhara

3.

1911, Uzbekistan. Emir of Bukhara. Bukhara

4.

1911, Russia. Dagestani types, village of Arakani

5.

1907, Uzbekistan. Prison of the town of Bukhara.

6.

1907, Uzbekistan, Bakery in the town of Bukhara

7.

1916, Russia. On the handcar outside Petrozavodsk on the Murmansk railway

8.

1910, Russia. Work at the Bakalskii mine, Tiazhelyi iron mine. Irkuskan hill near Bakal

9.

1907, Kyrgyzstan. At the Saliuktin mines.

10.

1909, Russia. Peasant girls, Topornya village

11.

1909, Russia. Dagestan, village of Arakani, Lezgian

12.

1912 Georgia. Georgian women, in the park of Borzhom

13.

1912, Georgia, Cotton. In Sukhum Botanical Garden

14.

1912, Azerbaijan. Mugan. Settler's family. Settlement of Grafovka, Grafskii

15.

1911, Uzbekistan. Sart types. Samarkand

16.

1911, Uzbekistan. Nazar Mahomet. Golodnaia Steppe

17.

1911, Uzbekistan, Nomadic Kirghiz. Golodnaia Steppe

18.

1910, Russia. spinning yarn. In the village of Izvedovo

19.

1911, Russia. His Highness Khan of Khiva in Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg

20.

1912, Russia. Laying concrete for the dam's sluice. Near the village of Beloomut

21.

1911, Uzbekistan. Doctors. Samarkand

22.

1912 Turkey. Mullah with his female students near the Artomelinskaya mosque in Artvin

23.

1910, Russia. Bashkir switchman. Near Ust-Katav station

24.

1912 Turkey. Armenian woman in holiday attire, Artvin

25.

1909, Russia. Ostrechiny. study. Svir River

26.

1912 Georgia. Mullahs in mosque. Aziziia. Batum

27.

1912, Azerbaijan, Mugan Steppe. Georgian woman in a folk costume

28.

29.

1916, Russia. Baling machine for hay. Near Kondopoga village

30.

1916, Russia. Austrian prisoners of war near a barrack, near Kondopoga village

31.

1916, Russia. group. Near the lake of Vygozero

32.

1911, Uzbekistan. Bukhara bureaucrat. At the palace In the Emir's Shir-Budun garden near Bukhara

33.

1911, Uzbekistan, Shepherd. Samarkand

34.

1911, Uzbekistan. Sentry at the palace, and old cannons. In Registan square. Bukhara

35.

1911, Uzbekistan. At work on the upper reaches of the Syr-Darya. Golodnaia Steppe

36.

1912, Russia. Night camp by a rock on the bank of the Chusovaia

37.

1911, Uzbekistan. Camel caravan carrying thorns for fodder. Golodnaia Steppe

38.

1904, Ukraine. In Little Russia. Near the town of Putivl in Kursk Province

39.

Study with boy. Western Europe

40.

1912, Belorussia. harvested field. Vitebsk Province

41.

1909, Russia. Haying at the Leushinskii Monastery

42.

1911, Uzbekistan. Group of Jewish children with a teacher. Samarkand

43.

1908 Switzerland. At the veranda in Lugano

44.

1912 Georgia. packaging department. Borzhom

45.

1911, Uzbekistan. On the Registan. Samarkand

46.

1911, Turkmenistan. Supplying cotton to cotton-processing manufacture in the Murgab Estate. Bairam Ali

47.

1911, Uzbekistan. Prime Minister of Bukhara (Kush-Beggi)

48.

1907, Uzbekistan. students. Samarkand

49.

1911, Uzbekistan. carpenter. Samarkand

50.

1911, Uzbekistan. Trader in the Registan. Samarkand

51.

1909, Russia. Northwest part of the town of Zlatoust

52.

1916, Russia. Group of railroad construction participants. On the pier in Kem-Pristan

53.

1911, Uzbekistan. Kebab restaurant. Samarkand

54.

1911, Uzbekistan. In the court of Shir-Dor mosque. Samarkand

55.

1909, Russia. Pinkhus Karlinsky. Eighty four years old. Sixty-six years of service. Supervisor of Chernigov floodgate

56.

1911, Turkmenistan. Tekin with his family. Bairam-Ali area

57.

1911, Turkmenistan. Supplying cotton to cotton-processing manufacture. Bairam-Ali area, Murgab Estate

58.

1911, Uzbekistan. water carrier. Samarkand

59.

1911, Uzbekistan. Policeman in Samarkand

60.

1911, Turkmenistan. Workers packing oil cake. Bairam Ali

61.

1911, Turkmenistan. Jigit Ibragim. Bairam-Ali area

62.

1907, Kyrgyzstan. Observing a solar eclipse on January 1, 1907, near the Cherniaevo Station in the Tian-Shan mountains above the Saliukta mines

63.

1907, Uzbekistan. Elderly Sart man (Babaika), Samarkand

64.

1912, Georgia, On the Skuritskhali River. study. Orto-Batum village. self-portrait

see also

There is no prophet in one's Fatherland - this catchphrase perfectly describes the biography of Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, who spent half his life developing the technology of a three-section overhead projector and capturing the rich diversity of his Motherland for history, and spent the last decades in Italy and France, where he worked with the Lumiere brothers and others Western experts. The collection of Prokudin-Gorsky's works ended up in the US Library of Congress, whose administration, after the death of the photographer (September 27, 1944), bought all the materials from the heirs (1902 triple negatives and 2448 black-and-white prints, a total of 2600 original images). In the same place, in the Library, the first complete biography of the famous photographer was compiled, and with the advent of the World Wide Web, an Internet site was created where everyone could get acquainted with the work of the great inventor, public figure and pioneer of color photography in Tsarist Russia. And work on the epic project began like this.

Russian photographer in the service of Tsar Nicholas II

Development of a three-section overhead projector

Color photographs by Prokudin-Gorsky