Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) - Early Colour Photography and the Russian Empire

Fabric merchant, Samarkand. Merchant's display includes silk, cotton, and wool fabrics as well as a few carpets. A framed page of the Koran hangs at the top of the stall (1905-1915)

From 1905 to 1915, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii recorded the Russian Empire - in colour.

His early colour photographic technique involved taking three black and white photos of a subject - each with a different tinted filter - and then combining the three to form a colour image.

This extraordinary enterprise has recently been made accessible to the general online public by Walter Frankhauser, who was contracted by the Library of Congress to restore 1900 of Prokudin-Gorskii's images. His results can be seen at The Empire That Was Russia. More of the photographer's work can be seen at the Russian site Сергей Михайлович Прокудин-Горский.

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii - Self Portrait

The photographs are breath-takingly beautiful - the composition of each seems so 'right' and without being forced or calculated. All clear, spaciously 'set out', uncluttered with excess detail.

I've organized a selection of images into five categories: people, technology, work and its consequences, buildings and city and landscapes.

People

Alim Khan (1880-1944) - Emir of Bukhara (1911)

Jewish Children with Teacher in Samarkand (1909-1915)

Dagestani couple posed outdoors for portrait (1904)

Turkmen man posing with camel loaded with sacks, probably of grain or cotton, Central Asia (1905-15)

Tea factory in Chakva. Chinese foreman Lau-Dzhen-Dzhau (1905-1915)

Turkman woman by yurt (1911)

Sunni Muslim man in traditional dress and headgear with sheathed dagger at his side. Dagestan (1905-1915)

Technology

Alternators made in Budapest, Hungary, in the power generating hall of a hydroelectric station in Iolotan on the Murghab River (1909)

Cotton textile mill interior with machines producing cotton thread, in Bayram-Ali (1911)

Russian steam locomotive Aa-76 (1910)

Metal Truss Railroad Bridge on Kama River, near Perm city (1909-1915)

Windmills in Yalutorovsk district of Tobolsk Province, Russia (1915)

Work

Haying, near rest time. Russian Empire. Farm workers standing near farm equipment, taking break (1909)

Method for storing hay Viazovaia Station (1909)

Melon vendor in traditional Central Asian attire at his stand in the marketplace of Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan (1905-1915)

Work at Bakalskii mine. Family with shovels and horse-drawn carts, working at iron mines in Bakaly Kills (1910)

Tea Weighing Station, Chakva tea farm and processing plant just north of Batumi, close to the Black Sea coast of Georgia (1905-1915)

Production of artistic casting in the Kasli Iron Works in heart of the Ural Mountains between the cities of Ekaterinburg and Cheliabinsk (1909-1915)

Monks at work. Planting potatoes. Gethsemane Monastery (1909)

Buildings

Shakh-i Zindeh Mosque in Samarkand (1905-1915)

Stork nests on unidentified religious building, probably in Bukhara (1911)

Church of the Assumption of the Mother of God. Belozersk, Russian Empire (1909)

Borodino Station (1911)

City and Landscapes

Dvinsk Daugavpils, Novoye Stroyeniye neighbourhood (1912)

General view of the town of Torzhok in the early 20th century

Staritsa, Russia (1912)

Tobolsk from north, from the bell tower of the Church of Transfiguration Preobrazhensky Sobor Russia (1912)

Thanks to Jason M for emailing me the URL of a blog - which started me on the search for more of Prokudin-Gorskii's images!