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The Kitchen Table

Remarkable 100-year-old color photos of Russia

16 years ago

Boston.com (The Big Picture) always has great photos. Here's what the introduction says about these:

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.

They really are pretty amazing. Do we have anyone of Russian decent here?

Here is a link that might be useful: 100-year-old Russian photographs

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Comments (16)

moonie_57 (8 NC)
16 years ago
Not of Russian decent and I know very little about photography, but I can admire amazing work when I see it. Wow... a century ago someone could take photos like that?
dirtundermyfingers
16 years ago
Thanks for posting this site, it is amazing, even my 7 year old loved looking at the pictures. These are absolutely amazing.

Stacie
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joann23456
16 years ago
Gorgeous! The people look like my paternal grandparents and their relatives. (They were Slovak, but still looked similar.)
glenda_al
16 years ago
THANKS FOR SHARING
Jodi_SoCal
16 years ago
Amazing! It makes you realize that 1910 wasn't really all that different from 2010. Life really was in color, not sepia tone.

Stuff like this is why I love coming to the KT. Thanks Susan!

Jodi-
lydia1959
16 years ago
Those were amazing! It was very hard to wrap my head around the fact that these photos are 100 years old and not taken yesterday with subjects dressed in costume. Such clear and colorful photographs!!

Thanks Alisande. I've bookmarked the page.
cathyid
16 years ago
Beautiful. Thanks for the chance to see them.
Kathsgrdn
16 years ago
All I can say is "Wow".
hayjud_mn
16 years ago
Those are amazeing!
drewsmaga
16 years ago
Wow! GORGEOUS photos! I am of Russian descent (maternal grandparents both immigrated 1900-1910) and I am fascinated with looking at old (1900-1970) photos from Russia. I look for "familiar" faces, and have occasionally found some, but without documentation to track the face down into a name. My genealogy stops at all 4 of my grandparents getting off a boat at Ellis Island. BTW, I was told as a kid that I was "Polish" probably because growing up in the 50's & 60's post WW2 it was a "safe" ethnicity to be. I didn't find out until I was 38 that I was half Russian. And I didn't discover until after my step-mother died, when I was 56, that I was half Austrian. I'm not Polish anymore. Thanks for the photos!
jemdandy
16 years ago
These photos are fantastic. The shots could have been made by using three cameras mounted on a common rail and carefully aligned with each other. All three cameras would be tripped at the same time by a special release cable. (Now, I'll have to go back and read how it was really done.)

I am struck by the harshness of the landscapes. It is reflected in people's faces, but the colorful architecture and clothing adds flair to their lives.

The railroad bridge was interesting. I noticed that the supports had ice and debris breakers built on the upstream side. That would be the angled prow with a sharp edge.

Not long before these pictures were made, Russia suffered through a drought and famine. I'm not sure about the date, but I think it was in the 1890s. I have a book titles, "Letters to the President", where a grateful thank you is recorded from the Russian Ambassidor to the US thanking the US citzens for a ship load of food stock and shipment of wheat.
taigen_gw
16 years ago
Wonderful photos Alisande...thanks so much for sharing them. It was like looking in a time capsule...just fascinating.
schoolhouse_gw
16 years ago
I loved them. Thanks for posting this link, I must share it with a travel forum I frequent. Amazing.
vala55
16 years ago
Years ago I found a site with a story about Chernobyl made by a Russian lady. Her father was one of the scientist that worked on the site after the problem. She drove through the site on a motor cycle with a camera and took a lot of pictures and had a journal. The pictures were indescribable. She was forced to shut it down once by the government. It was very sad, but educational. There are still places now one can go in. The good thing about it was the wild ponies are coming back in. I printed it all out in case the site was shut down again. She had to wear a badge that showed radiation levels. How easy we forget.
socks
16 years ago
Very, very interesting. Boston Globe provides such great photo collections. Thank you.
lynn_d
16 years ago
They are fantastic.

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