Russian People 100 Years Ago in Color

Russia 100 years ago

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.




Russia 100 years ago

These are owners of Military Factory on Ural, region close to Siberia.

Russia 100 years ago

Mill-houses made of unpainted wood, which became gray after many rains.

That’s a middle of the summer in Siberia.

Russia 100 years ago

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.
Russia 100 years ago
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.

Russia 100 years ago

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.

Russia 100 years ago
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.
Russia 100 years ago

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.
Russia 100 years ago
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.
Russia 100 years ago

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.
Russia 100 years ago

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.

Russia 100 years ago

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.

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    8:01 am


    41 Responses to “Russian People 100 Years Ago in Color”

    1. dave says:

      the library of congress has this on exhibition

    2. A fan says:

      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

    3. Delicious says:

      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.

    4. man says:

      Actually, russian people on pictures 2, 7 and so on…
      1st and last and similar pictures - they are not russians.

    5. these are really fantastic! Thanks!

    6. Now this is more like what English Russia should post up. Kudos.

    7. Chris says:

      Nice! Those were really great.

    8. Eric says:

      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.

    9. Texas1 says:

      Great stuff! Bravo!!

    10. Steve says:

      These are amazing and wonderful photos. They really make the past come alive. Remarkable. Thank you.

    11. Thank you. The pics are incredible.

    12. Alexander says:

      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.

    13. Ari says:

      Excellent job! It was like having an opportunity to peek in to past centuries.

      Well done!

    14. great choice of fotos and a very interesting post!

      cheers

    15. someguy3030 says:

      thanks!!! excellent pictures. would love to see more!

    16. eye says:

      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.

    17. It would be hard to post them all here. Prokudin-Gorsky made hundreds of those.

    18. /dev/null says:

      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….

    19. [...] 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. [...]

    20. FABULOUS!!!

      And Delicious (post 4), thank you for your interesting comment.

      I love this blog!!!

    21. sbull.net says:

      Amazing photos! But you don’t mine steel :P You mine iron and make steel

    22. [...] 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. [...]

    23. Richard S. says:

      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…

    24. 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!

    25. Olya says:

      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)

    26. Iran says:

      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.

    27. Shooroop says:

      It isn’t Russia, some photos from here - fucking arabians. And we’ve never had the camels…xD

    28. JZ says:

      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

    29. Ash says:

      You are giving misleading information here! Mixing up everything, some of the photos here are for Russians and some for non russian! Russian are slaves and many of what’s been posted are for non Slavic culture, so please be accurate and objective in giving information specially when it need to reflect a history of a nation some where, and for (Shooroop) …No they are not Arabs so shut the fuck up, they do not look like Arab and not every one with a Camel is an Arab, so shut the hell up, they are from the middle Asian republics like Tajikistan or so…

    30. 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

    31. Mikhail says:

      Some of the photos are from Samarkand, which is Uzbekistan today but back than it was a territory of Russian Empire

    32. Gerhard says:

      This is soooo cool! Please do publish more! Love your work :)

    33. Tolis says:

      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…

    34. [...] 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 [...]

    35. Milan Goeden says:

      Awesome blog post, thanks for keeping me busy!

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