The true colours of an Empire
It was 100 years ago that Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin- Gorskii was commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II to document the Russian Empire using a pioneering colour-photography technique. History showed this to be a timely enterprise What were the chances that at the start of the 20th century a modestly-born Russian photographer would get to meet the most powerful man in [...]
It was 100 years ago that Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-
Gorskii was commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II to document
the Russian Empire using a pioneering colour-photography
technique. History showed this to be a timely enterprise
What were the chances that at the start of the 20th century a modestly-born Russian photographer would get to meet the most powerful man in the land: the Tsar himself? After all, this was in the days before photographers became celebrities, something that
happened at the tail end of the century with the likes of Lord Snowdon, David Bailey and Mario Testino.
Yet when the practically unknown Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii developed his own photography technique
at the beginning of the 1900s, it was way ahead of its time. The results, in terms of colours and clarity, were so dazzling
that Tsar Nicholas II himself personally commissioned Prokudin-Gorskii to travel the length and breadth of the
then-Russian Empire in order to document it for future generations; an incredibly ambitious challenge.
Between 1909 and 1917, Prokudin-Gorskii traversed
the huge Empire by train, which was no mean feat. The
technology that he was using required an entire train
carriage to contain it all, darkroom included. An ‘Access
All Areas’-style pass, granted by the Tsar, enabled him to
photograph even highly classifi ed locations. The intrepid
photographer’s odyssey took him from the big cities of
Western Russia into the ‘Great Steppe’ of Central Asia,
taking in present-day Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, down to the Caucasus region
including Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Prokudin-
Gorskii’s photographs documented the latest in architecture
and technology (apart from that which he held in his hand),
beautiful landscapes, and people at work, prayer and play;
citizens of the Empire staring seemingly uncomprehendingly
into the camera, as though the conventions of photographic
posing hadn’t been established.
“Images of Tbilisi look as though they could easily have been taken just yesterday”
The modern viewer looks for change in the scenery.
A shot of Ekaterinburg from 1910, for example, reveals
nothing more than a cathedral with wooden shacks nearby;
the image is unrecognisable as the very same city that Tsar Nicholas II was to be executed in only eight years later,
or the thumping metropolis it is today. Yet by contrast,
Prokudin-Gorskii’s images of the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, look
as though they could easily have been taken just yesterday.
This is testament to the pioneering talent of Prokudin- Gorskii (now almost forgotten) who was born in Murom,
Russia, in 1863 (coincidentally also the birth place of one of
the pioneers of television, Vladimir Zworykin). After studying
to be a chemist, he went on to devote his life to photography
and in 1905, formulated the plan to celebrate the Russian
Empire using his new-found photographic techniques.
Only a mere decade ago, camera technology was far less impressive compared with today. Looking at old photographs of ourselves reminds us of how much the technology has
changed; and we tend to assume that everything before the
1950s was in black-and-white. Except that it wasn’t.
Colour photography was fi rst developed by the Scottish
scientist James Clerk Maxwell, who captured a tartan ribbon
(what else?) in colour in 1861. Then came Prokudin-Gorskii’s
technique; as ingenious as it is complicated. He would insert
a 7.5cm x 22.5cm glass plate into his camera, which was
installed with three separate lenses, each with a different
colour fi lter: red, green and blue. One click of the button and
all three lenses captured the scene simultaneously, imprinting
three (black-and-white) images measuring 7.5 x 7.5cm each
on the plate. Once this was done, Prokudin-Gorskii could align red, green and blue fi lters in such a way that projecting
light through them and the glass plate would reconfi gure the
colours in perfect harmony. The only possible errors occurred
when something in the scene was moving quickly, in which
case each of the three coloured lenses would catch a slightly
different version of it. When re-projected, colours would fl it
around the scene, giving a ghostly, disembodied impression.
Prokudin-Gorskii’s pioneering work could not have been more timely: his project was cut short by the fi rst rumblings
of the Russian Revolution in 1917 which would lead to the
toppling and eventual assassination of the very man who had
sponsored the enterprise. He continued his work in Europe
but his enduring legacy is his beautiful documentation of
a formidable Empire, moments before its collapse.
To fi nd out more about Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-
Gorskii, go to www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/gorskii.html
