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!

Mikhail Baryshnikov - Ballet's Super Sex Symbol and Perhaps the Greatest Dancer of the C20

And now for something completely different ...


... but, as the Shirley McLean character said in 'The Turning Point', the reason most girls like ballet classes at all is cos the boys are in tights.

So if you adjust your mind just a little, you'll find this post truly hot - in a whole new way. Try to trust me!

These are rehearsal shots ('Baryshnikov at Work') with Jerome Robbins, who did, among other things, the choreography for 'West Side Story'. The images are so big that, when you click on one, Mikhail almost jumps out into your living room, office, ... where ever!





Strong, muscular, voluptuous, erotic - and with thick blond hair and a beautiful square and super cute face.

What more do you want!

There's a great early video of Baryshnikov doing Solar's variation in 'La Bayadere' - in 1969 while he was still in the Soviet Union.

The gold medal they're referring to him winning is (I think) the one at the Varna (Bulgaria) International Ballet Competition.

Extraordinary seemingly effortlessly executed technique, amazing ballon (elevation and the ability to float in the air), clear, purposeful, controlled and sculpturally delineated port de bras (carriage, placement and movement of the arms and shoulders) ... I could go on and on but ... !

There's also a particularly sizzling 80s performance of him as Basilio in the coda of 'Don Quixote' with Natalia Makarova as Kitri. With a still timely warning at the end against the dangerous trend in dance for ultra thin ballerinas.

On stage Mikhail's multi-multi-fold hotter - which I can guarantee, having seen him as Prince Florimund in 'Sleeping Beauty', Romeo in 'Romeo and Juliet', Basilio in 'Don Quixote' and Albrecht in Act II of Giselle' with Natalia Makarova.

Ok, so what do you guys think?!

Things You Find Hidden in Antique Stores

Sometimes you find a thing in some obscure corner of an old antique store that seems potent with the history of place and time.

This late C18 Fu Lion or Fu Dog was one for me.



It was originally the lid of large ceramic urn, as are these fu lion lids for their bronzes.

Urn in the Imperial Living Quarters, Forbidden City, Beijing

The iconography of the decoration of the base of my ceramic lid gives its place of manufacture - the royal pottery in Beijing that produced wares for the Forbidden City.


At some point in its history the ceramic jar was broken - I guess beyond repair. But the lid was obviously thought worth restoring, perhaps in part due to its historical importance. The metal crimpons used suggest this work was done last century.

I lived for a year in China and often enough used to walk round the Forbidden City, bumping into 'relatives' of my beloved Fu Lion.




Finally, two more images - to give more of a sense of my imperial lion in the round.



I have the fanciful idea that I'll find the jar one day - in an auction or antique shop and being sold on it's own as it is unbroken and happily unassociated with its busted lid!

Two Early C20 Viennese Figurines

Every now and then I'm surprised by what catches my fancy. And these two early C20 Viennese figurines definitely fit into this category. Nothing hairy-chested at all about loving and buying them!

They are obviously both from the same factory. And in a (for me) appealing super-realist style.

Of ladies taking their dogs for a walk - one in a nineteen twenties mode ...





... and the other something more Edwardian ...





Ok, reactions ..... ?

Or will stunned silence be the thing!

LOL

May Gibbs and the Perils of Baking a Cake!

Can't help posting more of May Gibbs' work!

It's so endlessly charming.

From the anthropomorphised Australian bush creatures - both adorable and scary! To their beautifully realized gum nut world. And the lovely folksy rhyming couplets of the story. All complemented by the deliciously rustic gum nut twig script.









So much of life is in these seeming simple lines - generosity, the demands of tiredness, waggish teasing, danger, duty and loyalty, sweetness of temperament, co-operation ... . All with the dash of a sentiment that does not resonate too well in a cynical age - the triumph of the forces 'good' over 'bad'.

I think it's these underlying almost archetypal meanings that make May Gibbs' work so enduringly popular.

Beauties Still Lurking in the Late Summer Garden

It's late summer here in Sydney and most of the growth of spring has died back.

But there are still some natural beauties, like the epiphytes above and the bromeliads ...

The bogenvillia seem, at least in our sub-tropical climate, to be in flower most of the year!

And the flowers of one of the curry trees have turned to berries, and are now changing colour from green to red to purple - so a whole forest of new saplings is on its way again!

We're still eating fruit off the fig trees ...

... but there's only one papaya left ...

Breakfast tomorrow morning?

I think so!