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Rare Historical Photos Show 1910s Imperial Russia In Glorious Color
Given that our past was documented in mostly black and white photos, many of us can forget that it was also in full color – we just don’t get to see it. However, these photos of Imperial Russia at the beginning of the 20th century by photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky give us a rare glimpse into the past in full and glorious color.
Color photography, in the way that we understand it, was not possible at the time, but it was possible to create a color image for the viewer by using a unique photography technique. Prokudin-Gorsky had to take three separate photographs of the same subject – once with a red filter over the lens, once with a green filter, and once with a blue filter (red, green, blue – RGB – is a set of color channels used in many digital, as well as vintage photos). Later on, these three monochromatic images would be projected through filters of those same colors onto a screen and superimposed. When viewed through a final filter, they would appear as a realistic color image to the viewer.
A trained chemist and artist, Prokudin-Gorsky began creating tricolor photos after studying with German photochemistry professor Adolf Miethe. Tsar Nicholas II was so impressed by Prokudin-Gorsky’s colorful photo series, including his famous portrait of Leo Tolstoy, that he commissioned the photographer to take pictures all over Russia. Though he fled Russia after the October Revolution, he took the negatives, that weren’t confiscated, with him. These rare photos were eventually purchased by the U.S. Library of Congress in 1948 and published in 1980.
Source: U.S. Library of Congress (via: imgur)
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