He travelled to all the distant parts of Russian Empire. This is for example a dweller of Turkmenia, now Turkmenistan. Camels were the common way of transportation for cargo even when trains were introduced to locals by Russian government.
We had already before some photos of this photographer, who managed to make color photos of Russia 100 years ago in 1900-1910. It’s amazing to see the life back there in full color. He had a special task to travel across all the Russian Empire (that’s how Russia was called that times before Communism) and make thousands of such photos for a Royal Depositary. So he made literary thousands of color photos of Russia 100 years ago.
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These are owners of Military Factory on Ural, region close to Siberia.
Mill-houses made of unpainted wood, which became gray after many rains.
That’s a middle of the summer in Siberia.
That’s a first tea manufacturing factory located near the Batumi, nowadays Georgia, on the shore of the Black Sea.
It was the major supplier of tea to all the Russian Empire.
This is a market in Samarkand, he sells silk and wool fabrics together with some traditional middle east carpets.
On the top of his trading place one can see a page from Koran in the frame.
That’s another seller from the same marketplace in Samarkand, he sells melons.
He wears traditional cloths. Samarkand was part of Russia at that time.
That’s a steel factory, founded in 1747 between Ekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk cities, in Ural, close to Siberia, in the region rich with steel ore.
At the moment when the photo was made there were working more than 3,000 people at this factory.
And this is steel ore mining. This particular mine was a family owned business, one of many other suppliers of steel ore to that factory above. Literary all the family was involved in extracting of the ore.
This is a fall of 1909, depicts the peasants who are on the break from the crop collecting job. The photo is made near Cherepovec, a city which lies North from Moscow.
Those are Greek migrants from Greece working at tea collection, on the east shore of the Black Sea. In this region of Russia there was a big group of people from Greece.
The most warm regions of Russian Empire at that time were on the shores of the Black Sea, thanks to the mild climate in those regions some Southern sorts of plants, like tea or cotton, could be grown there.
That is the old man of Samarkand holds some birds he just has caught.
From time to time we would post more of this outstanding photographer together with descriptive comments.
His name was Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii
more info/pictures:
http://www.prokudin-gorsky.ru/collection.htm
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mikhailovich_Prokudin-Gorskii
the library of congress has this on exhibition
Just wanted to tell you that your blog is fantastic.
You know what I´m talking about: FAN TAS TIC!
In a world with so many boring blogs, englishrussia is just refreshing! Thanks
I’m a big fan of this type of photography. He had to make 3 exposures using three different color filters. The people in the photos had to stand or sit perfectly still. You’ll notice that they are all sitting, leaning on something, or standing in a way that makes this easy.)
If they move, the photos will have a odd color shadow around them. You can see this effect on the animals and on the a few of the people.
This is a very difficult method of photographing live subjects, and it makes me wonder how many tries each of these photos took before we got the ones we see.
Actually, russian people on pictures 2, 7 and so on…
1st and last and similar pictures – they are not russians.
these are really fantastic! Thanks!
Now this is more like what English Russia should post up. Kudos.
Good.
Nice! Those were really great.
I love this site so much. Seeing all of the pictures and stories from this point of view is really amazing in comparison to America’s. It makes me hate m country’s people more and more every day.
Keep up the spectacular work my friend.
Another great post!
Great stuff! Bravo!!
These are amazing and wonderful photos. They really make the past come alive. Remarkable. Thank you.
Thank you. The pics are incredible.
I seen that photos in the Russian Museum in Saint-Petersburg in 2003. Really perfect.
It is pity, that you’re not represented all the photos here.
Excellent job! It was like having an opportunity to peek in to past centuries.
Well done!
great choice of fotos and a very interesting post!
cheers
Wonderful!
thanks!!! excellent pictures. would love to see more!
Excellent pictures. Much more of this please, especially from across the whole of Russia. There’s more to Russia than Moscow and cars. Please show the wide spread of the different people.
It would be hard to post them all here. Prokudin-Gorsky made hundreds of those.
Really old color photographs…
I’ve seen these photographs about a half-dozen times over the last few years, but they’re absolutely fascinating, and therefore worthy of yet another mention. They’re color photographs taken all over the Russian empire in the first few years of the….
[...] This remarkable color photo was taken by a Russian photographer 100 years ago, but the little shop and its proprietor could have come from the time of Tamerlane. This is what the Old Silk Road must have looked like. English Russia has a fantastic collection of these exotic old photos. [...]
FABULOUS!!!
And Delicious (post 4), thank you for your interesting comment.
I love this blog!!!
Amazing photos! But you don’t mine steel
You mine iron and make steel
[...] Both English Russia and Carpetblogger recently highlighted the color photos of the Russian Empire from the early 1900s taken by the photographer, Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky. He used a technique of taking photo plates utilizing red, green, and blue filters, and by recombining these plates, a color image can be wonderfully reproduced. In his day, he used a special projector to illuminate the glass images to make color presentations. [...]
I am going to have to say nyet. I don’t think color photography was available in those days.They must be computer enhanced color photos…
I agree with “a fan”.
I love *cough* ancient Russian culture and heritage, probably stemming from the great novels from that time. Photography in this way I can never get enough of. Kudos to the maker and more of it!
Hello,)
Good photos,really
But nowdays Russia completely not such as on these photos
its very pleasantly, that the culture of Russia is interesting to you)
i read all the comments made, and like to share my feeling with all the ones who wrote their comments and praised the work done by a very special artist.
the work is beautiful, keep it up and like to see more of it.
[...] By David http://englishrussia.com/?p=612 http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/prokquery.html (Colección completa, con [...]
Very interesting website. I visited rural and urban Russia in Autumn 2005. I’ve posted your website link to the “Earth Intelligence Network” Twitter feed
http://twitter.com/earthintelnet
outstanding!
i’ve heard about some such photos taken at royal wedding in UK that times, but i didn’t knew it wasn’t stand-alone experiment
this photos are great, it’s like looking through a time-window, like listening to rachmaninoff pianola recordings
Some of the photos are from Samarkand, which is Uzbekistan today but back than it was a territory of Russian Empire
This is soooo cool! Please do publish more! Love your work
That was a truly special article out of a time machine,its weird feeling to see my ancestors-i am greek-here…BUT..i and i think most of us would like to know a bit of the history that lies behind these pics…Clearly i know too that camels were used in many countries,like turkey,note from arabs or egypt alone…
Great photos!
[...] i farger, og ikke i sorthvitt! Disse er russiske og hundre år gamle, flere bilder kan du se her http://englishrussia.com/?p=612. Posted by anettholmvik Filed in Blogg Leave a Comment [...]
[...] i sorthvitt! Disse er russiske og hundre år gamle. Bildene fant jeg på en av mine favorittsider englishrussia.com. Posted by honolaya Filed in Internett Leave a Comment [...]
Awesome blog post, thanks for keeping me busy!
[...] http://englishrussia.com/index.php/2007/01/25/russian-people-100-years-ago-in-color/ [...]
errr yeah.. really nerdish- anyone who even looks at this website is sooo a geek with big spectacles
I like your posts, one wonders)
If only more than 12 people would hear about this..
Amazing
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Saludos desde México, Yo conozco su sitio, por Marina Lapishka, en twitter es @marisk_ ella me mostró su sitio, es fantastico.
Greetings from Mexico. I arrived to your website because an Ekaterimbug friend Marina Lapishka -aka @marisk_ in twitter- she show me this fantastic place, and i will spread in my site, your bautiful place!!!!
Alejandro.
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ya… coool… but its not clear…..
and Russia has its own culture … but thats not shone here..
I think that EnglishRussia is one of the better sites on the web but I am not feeling very well and I am going to get off the internet now.