Russia in color, a century ago

[love_nutz2]

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html

With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time - when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948.

see the rest in the link above

 

[No Limit]

Really awesome photos. This is cool too (might have been posted here already, don't remember) :

http://charmcitycurrent.com/innervisions/2010/08/20/the-great-depression-in-color/

 

[Adabiviak]

Neat!

 

[Escaep]

These are neat as well: http://blogs.denverpost.com/captured/2010/07/26/captured-america-in-color-from-1939-1943/

 

[Krynn72]

These are awesome and neat!


Why did they dress like we were still in the Feudal age? Also, I'm just gunna throw this out there, but those are some ugly, ugly people.

 

[FrostedxB]

These are awesome and neat!


Why did they dress like we were still in the Feudal age? Also, I'm just gunna throw this out there, but those are some ugly, ugly people.

From what I understand, they had very limited contact with the western world for years due to poor trade routes and lots of rural land. A lot of Russian towns/villages couldn't communicate/trade with one another in winters due to poor trade routes and cold/snowy winters.

 

[fishdbaz]

Why is it that no one in the past ever smiled? Everyone looks they're attending a funeral.
Edit:

Also, I'm just gunna throw this out there, but those are some ugly, ugly people.

This too.

 

[Combine Hybrid]

They looks like middle eastern.

 

[Schall]

I had no idea photos like these were possible back then.(They're better than my camera!)

 

[Warped]

very cool pictures and it changes the perspective at the time. They are not that ugly people at all, in fact, look better than some today!

 

[kupocake]

Why is it that no one in the past ever smiled? Everyone looks they're attending a funeral.

Not sure if it applies to the process in these photos, but early photography had crappy exposure times and therefore, if you moved around at all, you'd mess up the photo. IIRC, this was true to the extent that you'd have to hold a smile perfectly for several minutes, which when you think about it, is really quite hard. And hey, sitting still whilst paint dries isn't enough to make most people smile.

Considering the three-filter process, perhaps the photographer instructed his subjects to be straight-faced for this exposure reason, or because of the expense and rarity of his materials. You can't go quite as wrong with funeral faces as you can with an assortment of camera smiles.

 

[Druckles]

Why is it that no one in the past ever smiled? Everyone looks they're attending a funeral.

Posing hadn't been invented.

 

[YROC]

This is some wicked cool shit.

TimeMachine2.net

 

[Eejit]

These are awesome and neat!


Why did they dress like we were still in the Feudal age? Also, I'm just gunna throw this out there, but those are some ugly, ugly people.

Russia pretty much still was in the Feudal age. They had been left behind by the industrial revolution in the 19th century and were only beginning to modernise after the war with Japan in 1905. They even had serfdom up until near the end of the 1800s. If I remember my history classes from 7 years ago correctly

 

[Dynasty]

I love seeing old photos originally in black and white get processed into coloured photos.

No idea about how its done, all I know is how awesome it is to watch programs on Discovery like WW2 In Colour.

Really awesome photos. This is cool too (might have been posted here already, don't remember) :

http://charmcitycurrent.com/innervisions/2010/08/20/the-great-depression-in-color/

I agree with the guy who took those shots, you just cant get that look with digital photography these days. Sure you can mimmick it with post-effects software, but nothing beats old-skool film photography.

When I went to Uganda as part of one of my Uni modules, I took a film camera. Every photo looked so much better than everyone else's simply because of the richness and slightly grained look of each photo.

 

[The Monkey]

Holy shit, that was awesome. It's hard to wrap your head around the fact that they were taken a century ago.

 

[Ravioli]