Colored Russian Empire in the photographs of Produkin-Gorsky

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Russian Empire was famous for its talented people in various fields. There were also outstanding photographers in Russia. The pioneer of world color photography Prokudin-Gorsky is known as the owner of the largest collection of color photographs of pre-revolutionary Russia.

From chemist to photographer

Since childhood, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky was interested in the exact sciences: physics, chemistry, biology. He was a student of Dmitry Mendeleev, worked as a chemist and lectured at universities and academies. From his youth, Gorsky's favorite hobby was photography. In the 1890s, Gorsky decided to devote himself entirely to this craft. He began his career with the study of photographic painting, visiting exhibitions in Berlin and Paris.

Beginning in 1897, Prokudin-Gorsky began to send regular photo reports to the Russian Imperial Technical Society. A year later, he became a permanent member after showing a series of images called Starfall. Since 1898, Gorsky began to publish scientific works on photography. He has published several reports on the development of negatives and described his experience with handheld cameras.

Start shooting in color

At the beginning of 1903, Prokudiy-Gorsky first published a report on the use of the Mite method for creating color photographs. German scientist and photographer Adolph Mite had discovered a revolutionary way of developing images with the highest color reproduction two years earlier. According to Novate.ru, in 1902, Proskudiy-Gorsky was trained at the Mite laboratory in Berlin, where he personally met a German photographer and learned about its development.

In order to create a color photograph using the new method, it was necessary to take three pictures using different color filters. After that, frames of three different colors were projected simultaneously onto the screen, and the result was a colorful color photograph. The process was very laborious, it took several hours to create one photo. Over the years, Gorsky improved Mite's method, significantly reducing the time spent.

Travel across Russia and Europe

For fifteen years, Prokudiy-Gorsky went on several dozen trips to Russia and European countries and made about 3,500 color photographs in total. The Gorsky Photo Archive is the largest collection of color photographs from the Tsarist era. The works of the Russian photographer have appeared many times at exhibitions in France, Germany and England, and also won several honorary awards.

From 1904 to 1906 the photographer visited the Crimea, the Caucasus, Finland and Kazakhstan, from where he brought several hundred unique color photographs. A year later, Gorsky set off on a long journey across Turkestan, where he wanted to capture a major solar eclipse. And although the idea could not be realized due to cloudiness, the photographer took many pictures of the city and its inhabitants.

In 1908, Prokudiy-Gorsky visited the Yasnaya Polyana estate, where he captured Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Later, in his memoirs, the photographer noted that the great writer became very interested in Gorsky's works and predicted a great future for color photography. There is also information that he photographed the royal family, but these pictures are not in the public domain or they are irretrievably lost.

The fame of the great Russian photographer spread throughout Russia and reached the emperor himself. In 1909, Nicholas II personally commissioned Gorsky to make a large collection of photographs of the cultural life of the Russian Empire. For traveling around the country, the photographer was separately allocated a train carriage, for sea trips - a boat, and a foreign Ford car was specially ordered for ground movement. The emperor endowed Prokudin-Gorsky with the right to freely visit any place in Russia.

For seven years, Gorsky took a couple of thousand color photographs. Among the photographs were landscapes, architectural structures, as well as portraits and scenes from the cultural life of the people. One of the last trips to Russia was a trip to Murmansk in 1916. During the war, Prokudin-Gorsky censored foreign films, and also trained military pilots in aerial photography.

Living abroad

The unfolding revolution brought to naught the career of Prokudin-Gorsky. The homeland, which the photographer so praised in his works, was completely destroyed. Due to the precarious financial situation, Gorsky decides to emigrate abroad. In 1918 he moved to Norway, and a year later to England. Ultimately, in 1922, Gorsky finally settled in France, where he met the legendary Lumiere brothers. With them, he is developing color cinematography, but, unfortunately, their cooperation was not long.

Ultimately, the legendary photographer never managed to achieve his former heights abroad. Prokudin-Gorsky, together with his sons, until his death in 1944, continues to engage in photography, in order to somehow make ends meet. In 1948, the sons of Gorsky sold all the works of the Russian photographer to the US Congress, which currently owns them.