Russian Empire in Color

Here's a hearty toast to Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii--the master of early color photography in Russia, on the occasion of his 150th birthday, August 30, 2013!

Please try your own hand at creating a color image from the blue-, green-, and red-filtered frames of the b&w glass negatives. Blaise Agüera y Arcas developed an automated solution in 2004 after Walter Frankhauser pioneered the recovery of the color images through polished photoshop renderings in 2000.

Learn More:

* Explore the whole collection at the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.

* Enjoy then & now views, new photo identifications, and helpful maps at the website Legacy of S. M. Prokudin-Gorsky, 2008-. (Vasiliy V. Dryuchin and Vyacheslav N. Ratnikov, project leaders.)

* Study the color production methods. An illustration of each step and the equipment used is part of the online exhibit, The Empire That Was Russia.

* Read about the photographer's life and the collection history in: Adamson, Jeremy, and Helena Zinkham. "The Prokudin-Gorskii Legacy: Color Photographs of the Russian Empire, 1905-1915." Comma 3-4 (2002): 107-144. Available as a pdf file, www.wien2004.ica.org/en/node/30480.