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

[communicator.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Amazingly crisp and vivid images

[aervir.livejournal.com]

Wow. Thank you very much for pointing out such an unusual post! I had never heard of this photo collection before, but I am very impressed. The quality of these pictures is almost surreal if you are used to thinking about the past in sepia tones. I mean in my mind's eye even the Second World War takes place in black and white, and my image of time before WWI is more akin to a faded family photograph. And, all of a sudden, impressions from imperial Russia are so vivid and clear that one could almost touch the people in the pictures... Fascinating and strange.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

When my son was four, and had been looking at his grandmother's photos, he asked why things had all been brown when she was young (he didn't know the word sepia).

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

That is amazing and fascinating. Thank you so much. I shall enjoy exploring the sites shezan mentions. Especially stunning are the rabbi and emir photos--I had no idea such sumptuous dyes were used in those days.

[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.