Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky (Russian: Серге́й Миха́йлович Проку́дин-Го́рский (help·info), August 31, 1863, Murom – September 27,
1944, Paris) devoted his career to the advancement of
photography. Prokudin-Gorsky was born in Murom in what is now
Vladimir Oblast, Russia and educated as a
chemist.[1] He
studied with renowned scientists in St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Paris, and developed early techniques for taking
color photographs.
Technique
His own original research yielded patents for producing color film slides and for projecting
color motion pictures. Around 1905, Prokudin-Gorsky envisioned and formulated a plan to use the
emerging technological advancements that had been made in color photography to systematically document the Russian Empire. Through such an ambitious project, his ultimate goal was to educate the schoolchildren of
Russia with his "optical color projections" of the vast and diverse history, culture, and modernization of the empire.
His process used a camera that took a series of monochrome pictures in rapid sequence,
each through a different colored filter. By projecting all three monochrome pictures using correctly-colored light, it was
possible to reconstruct the original color scene. Any stray movement within the camera's field of view showed up in the prints as
multiple "ghosted" images, since the red, green and blue images were taken of the subject at slightly different times.
He also successfully experimented with making color prints of the photographs, but the process was complicated and slow. It
was only with the advent of digital image processing that the images could be satisfactorily combined into one. [2]
Photography
Outfitted with a specially equipped railroad car darkroom provided by Tsar Nicholas II, and in possession of two permits that granted him access to restricted areas and
cooperation from the empire's bureaucracy, Prokudin-Gorsky documented the Russian Empire around 1909 through 1915. He conducted
many illustrated lectures of his work.
His photographs offer a vivid portrait of a lost world—the Russian Empire on the eve of World
War I and the coming Russian revolution. His subjects ranged from the medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia, to
the railroads and factories of an emerging industrial power, to the daily life and work of Russia's diverse population.
Crop from
Alleia Hamerops showing the red, green and blue colour channels as well as the composite image.
Prokudin-Gorsky left Russia in 1918, going first to Norway and England before settling in Paris, France, where he died in 1944. By then, the tsar and his family had been executed during the Russian Revolution, and the Communist rule had been established over what was once the Russian
Empire. His unique images of Russia on the eve of the revolution—recorded on glass plates—were
purchased by the United States' Library of Congress in 1948 from his heirs.[1]
In 2001, the Library of Congress produced an exhibition, The Empire that was Russia. For this exhibition, the glass
plates were scanned and color images were produced digitally from the scanned red, green,
and blue monochrome images, using a process called Digichromatography which was developed by Walter
Frankhauser.
In 2004, the Library contracted with Blaise Agüera y Arcas to produce an automated color
composite of each of the 1,902 negatives from the high resolution digital images of
the glass plate negatives. A complete description of his process and a list of other sites that have prepared digital color
composite images are in the collection profile at the Library of Congress.[3][4]
Gallery
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An undated color photograph between 1905 and 1915
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The mid-18th century Trinity Monastery in Tyumen, ca. 1912
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See also
- Albert Kahn, a patron of photography, who funded photographers to travel around
the world recording colour images and cine film of diverse ethnic societies between 1909 and 1931.
References
External links
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