The Prokudin-Gorskii collection

[altariel]

I sometimes joke that a lot of history happened in black and white. And that round about the turn of the century, people moved in a funny, jerky way.

shezan, in a series of terrific posts, has saved me the effort of writing about the plates from the collection of Mikhail Prokudin Gorskii. Between 1905 and 1915, Gorskii travelled across imperial Russia, taking pictures. It's only in the past few years that these plates have been colourized. They are remarkable.

The following links lead to very big pictures. shezan starts with a summary of Prokudin Gorskii's life in this post. The colours in these pictures are startling. More here, with this great insight: "The result is this calm, reflective view of the land and its inhabitants. It is the reverse of jingoistic imperialism; landscape as horizon rather than frontier."

Comments

[michaelschuster.livejournal.com]

Thanks for pointing out that site to us, the LJ community!

The lack of colour does influence our perception of late 19th and early 20th century history. I know how surprised I was when I first saw a colour picture of Hitler in a newspaper - I'd been used to seeing photos from the early 1900s in black and white.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you found the site interesting. I remember that exact same surprise at seeing colour pictures - and, even more, colour film footage - of Hitler.