Color photos from Imperial Russia 1909-1915!

[benburch]

I kid you not.

These were made by the Czar's photographer, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii using a three-camera, three-filter process, and in some ways are better than mid-century color films in color fidelity.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dellaert/aligned/

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mikhailovich_Prokudin-Gorskii

[catzies]

1. They are breathtakingly beautiful. Thanks for finding & sharing

Wow. What a treasure find. What an amazing relic to have survived.

[benburch]

2. Many more at the links! nt

[Radio_Lady]

20. I'm sending these to everyone of Russian heritage in our family!

Thanks for sharing them, benburch!

[Radio_Lady]

23. "Rabbi, is there a blessing for the Czar?"

Rabbi: "A blessing for the Czar? (CHANTED LOUDLY) God bless and keep the Czar -- FAR AWAY FROM US!" (All laugh...)

From: "Fiddler on the Roof"

----
Our Jewish forebearers were ordered to leave Russia in the early 1900s. "Fiddler" tells some of the story, but not all.

[liberalpragmatist]

45. Here are some more:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/prokhtml/prokback.html

That'll get you nearly 2000 pictures (most of them in an uncropped, unrestored form, but still pretty remarkable). Another 120, about half of which were put on exhibit, have been cropped and restored.

Click the above link - the restored, cropped images are under "Color Renderings." The full collection is under "Glass Negatives." Click an image for more options.

[Olney Blue]

3. gorgeous- thank you

[tridim]

4. Thanks for posting those

They're amazing. Early color photographs are always interesting IMO.

[fishwax]

5. I love these pictures

I still remember the first time I saw them, because it required a certain imagination to convince myself that the world back then could actually be captured in color.

There are also great color pictures of WWI made using a different procecss (dyed potato grains), developed (i believe) by the Lumiere brothers, who were also fundamental in the history of moving pictures. The color is not as striking, but the pics are still beautiful in their own way.

Have you seen these?



http://www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com/index.html

Thanks for posting these, I always love looking at them :hi:

[benburch]

7. No I hadn't!

Thanks for that link!

[Hissyspit]

26. Autochrome - introduced by the Lumiere Brothers

If I'm not mistaken, these would be made with one camera and were a paper print, but the process was expensive and difficiult to work with.

Many people don't realise that there were color motion picture technologies around at this time but they were not "mainstream" because they were impractical to mass produce. Color photography principles and processes were around in the late 1800s, but again, were difficult to use.




Autochrome from 1910:




Here's a stereo image from 1850:

[mike_c]

6. oh my-- those are amazing-- like time travel....

Some artifacts notwithstanding, those pics are a direct link to people that have lived their lives and died, and events viewed on an afternoon nearly a century ago that look like we could step into them today. Wow.

[theoldman]

8. Hard to believe that the photos were taken so long ago.

I don't think I could do much better with my digital camera.

[tuvor]

9. Great stuff! Thank you for posting it.

Holy crap, you weren't kidding when you said more were at the link!

[C_U_L8R]

10. amazing .. thank you

i sent to all my photo friends

[Gloria]

11. Wonderful, I love looking at photos like these......notice the

photo with the bridge....empty, no cars.

The second photo with the little children on the hillside....my father was born in 1909. He would have been small, like some of those children in the picture....

[Garbo 2004]

12. Wow! Thanks for the links Ben. As Mike C said, it's like timetravelling to

see them.

[RagAss]

13. LOVE IT....I ran across some color WWI photos of French soldiers

on a site once and was actually amazed at the uniform colors....light blue and yellow(think of the old classic San Diego Chargers home uniforms)....I guess we always think black and white when we think of the early 1900's ...

[SaveElmer]

21. Those are here...

http://www.worldwaronecolorphotos.com/index.html

[RagAss]

29. YEAH....THANKS !!!!!!

[Libby2]

14. Stunning! Thank you.

[joeunderdog]

15. These look digital to me.

AS I read the article, it says that it wasn't until digital processing was available that these images were possible. Wonder what they looked like raw.

[benburch]

17. They had to be viewed using a special light box.

You would insert all three plates in front of light sources with red green and blue filters, the images were combined using beam splitters (partially silvered mirrors).

If you got the amount of light just right, and carefully aligned the plates, and held your head in just the right place you would see approximately what you see here.

But until digital processing, actually printing those images as a single photograph was nearly impossible.

Also the digital processing can remove scratches, dust, and other defects that century old plates will have.

[eleny]

16. this is such a treat

i'll be sharing these urls.

[Swamp Rat]

18. Wow!

Pass the borscht! :9

[Viva_La_Revolution]

19. That 4th picture is gorgeous!

View of the Nilova Monastery
The Monastery of St. Nil' on Stolobnyi Island in Lake Seliger in Tver' Province, northwest of Moscow, illustrates the fate of church institutions during the course of Russian history. St. Nil (d. 1554) established a small monastic settlement on the island around 1528. In the early 1600s his disciples built what was to become one of the largest, wealthiest, monasteries in the Russian Empire. The monastery was closed by the Soviet regime in 1927, and the structure was used for various secular purposes, including a concentration camp and orphanage. In 1990 the property was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church and is now a functioning monastic community once more.



Thank you so much for posting these!

[Toucano]

48. That's my favorite, too! n/t

[Selatius]

22. I feel sorrow for those three girls

They would live through the chaos wrought by the 1st World War, and they would witness the bloodshed of the October Revolution, the tyranny of Stalin, the terror and brutality of Adolf Hitler's invasion of Russia, and the long Cold War.

[Radio_Lady]

Sad thought, but true. We never know what life holds for us when we

are so young.

[Radical Activist]

39. Amazing collection.

I notice how much cultural diversity there was in the empire. Its a shame the Soviets did so much to destroy the unique heritage within the empire.

[ContraBass Black]

42. Any idea what that food is?

Would have there been berry farming in the area?

[benburch]

47. Perhaps not berry farming...

...but many places to gather them wild.

In fact, a lot like my back yard which has been invaded with raspberry canes and mulberry bushes.

[ContraBass Black]

49. Whoa.

I fell into a DU wormhole.

[benburch]

50. I've never been called that before!`

:silly:

[stevedeshazer]

24. incredible - thanks -n/t

[Odin2005]

25. WOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!

:wow:

[Bonobo]

27. I just spent the last hour glued to my monitor! Thanks!

[unkachuck]

28. beautiful and fascinating....thank you....n/t

[Straight Shooter]

30. Enchanting. They seem to have come from a dream. Thank you! n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

31. Beautiful! And in the 2nd photo you can see life - some of the children,

especially the one farthest to the left of the image, moved between exposures and so you see colored ghosts. The B&W photos taken during the American Civil War, when the exposures were so long that horses switched their tails and nodded their heads, trees blew in the wind, and people in the background went about their business, strike me so strongly because of this breath of real life captured in the blurs. These are the same, but you have to look closely for the colored ghosts.

[intheflow]

32. I just posted a link here in the Photo Group.

These are wonderful finds! This photographer thanks you for the eye candy. :hi:

[electropop]

33. Amazing and beautiful!

Thank you for teaching me something new today.

[FogerRox]

34. Oh great, I just spent an hour lookin at these pics... back to work......

[dave123williams]

35. Wow; looks like they had clean air and clean water...

[HughBeaumont]

36. Saw something along these lines at the LOC Visitors center . . .

They were from New Mexico, 1939-42 from the Dust Bowl. Such clarity, it was like traveling back in time.

[Marie26]

37. What beautiful photos! nt

[eppur_se_muova]

38. Amazing photos. Anything we haven't seen for ourselves seems unreal.

Here's a lost world made real again.

Not a single car in those pictures, or modern road, or airplane, or high-rise office building.

My favorite so far: the tilt-a-whirl windmill houses

[Kurovski]

40. Some are like paintings, The blue-sky onion domes

capture a weird semse of reality, it feels like the day.

Whatever that means. Thanks! Bookmarked.

I wonder if Condi likes these? :D

[Crabby Appleton]

41. Thanks, beautiful

My grandparents were from the Ukraine, came over in 1905 through Ellis Island.

[liberalpragmatist]

43. Here are some more links for people, if they're interested...

Thanks for posting these BenBurch. I've posted these a couple times before in the DU Lounge b/c I love sharing these - it never ceases to amaze people:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=105&topic_id=4550327

There are over 2000 images, of which 1900 or so are in color.

Most are simply the scanned negatives, like this:



About 120 were digitally restored for an exhibit. The link you posted above has about half of those, the ones that were put on display, although there are several more.





Use this link to access the ENTIRE collection:

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/prokhtml/prokback.html

The digitally restored ones (the ones you posted, plus many more not in the exhibit) are under "Color Renderings" (click an image and scroll down for the restored, cropped image). The entire collection (all 1900+) are under "Glass Negatives"

[OnceUponTimeOnTheNet]

55. mark for viewing tonight

Lovely photos!

[AzDar]

44. WOW! Thanks for those....truly amazing! n/t

[benburch]

46. You are MOST welcome.

:)

[Bucky]

51. Thank you for this. Hard to believe these are 100 years old.

It's such a vibrant, colorful world he captured. What an awesome find.

[Vidar]

52. Fabulous. Thank you.

[annabanana]

53. a captive:

This guy is on a leash!

[dand]

54. Priceless,

what an amazing treasure, thanks.

[lonestarnot]

56. Lovely pics benburch!

[SethInUpstateNY]

57. Wow, thanks for the pictures!

Those pictures are just amazing.

[spuddonna]

58. Just beautiful... Thank you for sharing these!!

I think I'll send some to my father-in-law. He used to work at Kodak on emulsions. I wonder if he's ever seen these?

[spuddonna]

59. He hadn't! :)

Thanks for helping me score brownie pts with my father-in-law! :7 Have a great Independence Day! :hi: