Czarist Russia in color (1905–1915)
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Czarist Russia in color (1905–1915)
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Re: Czarist Russia in color (1905–1915)
#2The whole collection is here: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/prok/?loclr=flik
Re: Czarist Russia in color (1905–1915)
#3Notice how hardly anyone is smiling at that thing named a camera obscura.
Re: Czarist Russia in color (1905–1915)
#4I show them to a friend and expected they are from the '90...
Re: Czarist Russia in color (1905–1915)
#5What's most awesome about these pictures, is that looking many of them, you could easily imagine they were taken today. It's astonishing that the picture of modern life we see all around us, we build up this idea in our heads that we've come so far in the past hundred or so years, but in reality, much of the world - even in the West, hasn't come that far at all.
Re: Czarist Russia in color (1905–1915)
#6I think it might be the same as this from 2010:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_c...
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Re: Czarist Russia in color (1905–1915)
#7Here's a bit on the photographer and the specific technique used to capture these photos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky#Photogr...
When I was younger, in the early 90s, I had a chance to be on one of the earliest U.S.-Russian student exchanges following the fall of the Soviet Union. I spent a summer there, mostly in the Urals, but a bit East of those mountains as well, sometimes out in open steppe areas.
If somebody asked me what my top 2 memories of that trip were I'd probably narrow down a great number of memorable moments into these two things:
- The incredible warmth and hospitality of the Russian people and our host families.
- The blue enormity of the Russian sky. I've never seen it captured quite right in pictures until the first time I saw Gorsky's photos.
I learned later that Russian recognizes two different kinds of blue as base colors in the language: синий (what most languages call "blue") and голубой or what in English we call "light blue". Being surrounded by that sky all the time, it's no wonder.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/19/7780.full
http://blog.properrussian.com/2011/05/what-colors-are-there-...
Re: Czarist Russia in color (1905–1915)
#8What's most awesome about these pictures, is that looking many of them, you could easily imagine they were taken today. It's astonishing that the picture of modern life we see all around us, we build up this idea in our heads that we've come so far in the past hundred or so years, but in reality, much of the world - even in the West, hasn't come that far at all.
I wouldn't say that. The clothes look uncomfortable, there are mud tracks rather than road, the whole city is two- or even one-story buildings (which implies you'd be living without any subcultural clubs in walking distance - hope you enjoy the same things everyone else does). Even the melons the guy is selling are clearly in much worse condition than modern supermarket produce. And look at how many people it takes just to operate one small fire engine or boat.
These are beautiful, fascinating pictures, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Re: Czarist Russia in color (1905–1915)
#9Notice how hardly anyone is smiling at that thing named a camera obscura.
I think its because they had to sit still for a long time while the photograph is taken.
Re: Czarist Russia in color (1905–1915)
#10Notice how hardly anyone is smiling at that thing named a camera obscura.
Judging from the blurred children, the exposure times were probably on the order of a few seconds. Even if you wanted to, it's hard to hold a smile that long.