These haunting color images by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky and Piotr Vedenisov show Imperial Russia on the verge of revolution and about to change forever. The two photographers managed to capture life as it was lived by the people – and they did it in full color.
In the early 1900s, Prokudin-Gorskii mapped out a plan for a photographic survey of the Russian Empire, a plan that won the support of Tsar Nicholas II. Between 1909 and 1915, Prokudin-Gorskii crisscrossed the Russian Empire via train, taking photographs of 11 different regions.
Vedenisov worked primarily with aristocratic families, particularly the Kosakovs, and managed to capture a different style of life from the peasants of the Russian Empire.
Imperial Russia, one of the largest empires that the world has ever seen, thrived from 1720 all the way until 1917. It stretched across three continents, encompassed diverse lands and people, and crushed Napoleon when he was reckless enough to attempt to conquer it. But, ultimately, the Russian Revolution of 1917 would put an end to Imperial rule, bringing a long era of history to a close.
Even though color photography, as we understand it today, was not possible at the time, creating a color image for the viewer by completing three separate photographs was indeed possible. The photographers had to take three separate photographs of the same subject – once with a red filter over the lens, once with a green filter, and once with a blue filter (red, green, blue – RGB – is a set of color channels used by many digital images as well). Later on, they projected the three monochromatic images through filters of those same colors onto a screen and superimposed. When viewed through a final filter, they would appear as a realistic color image.
A sociologist and English major by degree, I've worked in the area of civil society & human rights and have been blogging in the fields of travel, nature & science for over 20 years.
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