The boston.com Big Picture site (
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html) has done it again, with a set of fantastic memories of a bygone era.
"With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time - when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948."
And I love the little touches that #27 is a bit out of register (maybe he bumped the tripod) and you can see the shadow of the photographer bent over his camera in #29.
I'd love to see modern day pics of some of the readily recognisable places (like the ones of the cities) from the same viewpoints.
A place I've always dreamed of visiting but way beyond my budget, I'm afraid. Maybe I'll win the lottery!
