Full Color Photos Of The Russian Empire During The Early Twentieth Century

Between 1909 and 1912, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii embarked on a photographic survey of the Russian Empire. His technique of using a specialized camera that caught images in rapid succession with red, blue, and green filters allowed them to be later recombined and run through filtered lanterns to create "near true color" photos. I don't completely grasp all that, but these pictures speak for themselves.

• 1. Outside Artvin (now part of Turkey), an Armenian woman poses in national garb. [Circa 1910.]

  

• 2. Self-portrait of Prokudin-Gorskii, beside the Karolitskhali River in the Caucasus Mountains on the eastern coast of the Black Sea. [Ca. 1910.]

  

• 3. A chapel where the ancient city Belozersk once was. [1909.]

  

• 4. Bird's eye view of Tiflis (Tblisi), Georgia. [Ca. 1910.]

  

• 5. Isfandiyar Jurji Bahadur, leader of the Russian protectorate, Khorezm (present-day Khiva, Uzbekistan). [Ca. 1910.]

  

• 6. A shepherd boy on the Sim River in the Ural Mountains. [1910.]

  

• 7. Hungarian-made alternators in a hydroelectric station in Iolotan (Eloten), Turkmenistan. [Ca. 1910.]

  

• 8. Women in Dagestan. [Ca. 1910.]

  

• 9. 84-year-old Pinkhus Karlinskii on the Mariinskii Canal. [1909.]

  

• 10. View of the Nikolaevskii Cathedral in Mozhaisk. [1911.]

  

• 11. Jewish children and their teacher, Samarkand, Uzbekistan. [Ca. 1910.]

  

• 12. A switch operator on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, outside Ust Katav. [1910.]

  

• 13. Workers and supervisors on the Oka River dam. [1912.]

  

• 14. Prokudin-Gorskii riding a handcar on the Murmansk Railway by Lake Onega. [1910.]

  

• 15. A dog resting on the shore of Lake Lindozero. [1910.]

  

• 16. View the entire set of incredible images here!