The Prokudin-Gorskii Photos

(Above) B&W Photograph by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.

Steam Engine Kompaund with a Shmidt Super-heater, ca. 1910
Digital color rendering. Click on image for larger view.
© Library of Congress
(Above) Same photograph after digital color (digichromatography) added to match original early process. © Library of Congress

Image © Library of Congress

Prokudin-Gorskii created albums to serve as photographic records of his trips across the Russian Empire. Each album is composed of contact prints—created from his glass plate negatives—which were mounted in the order in which he traveled. The album page shown here was created in 1915 during his last known documentary trip.

(Above) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.
Cotton textile Mill Interior, ca. 1907-1915
Digital color rendering. Click on image for larger view.
© Library of Congress

(Above) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.
Factory Interior Showing Turbines, ca. 1907-1915
Digital color rendering. Click on image for larger view.
© Library of Congress

(Above) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.
Cotton. In Sukhumi Botanical Garden, 1910
Digital color rendering. Click on image for larger view.
© Library of Congress

(Above) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.
A Sart Old Man, 1911
Digital color rendering. Click on image for larger view.
© Library of Congress

(Above) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.
Melon Vendor, 1911
Digital color rendering. Click on image for larger view.
© Library of Congress

(Above) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.
Mills in lalutorovsk Uyezd of Tobol’sk Province, 1912
Digital color rendering. Click on image for larger view.
© Library of Congress

(Above) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.
A Zindan (prison), ca. 1907-1915
Digital color rendering. Click on image for larger view.
© Library of Congress

(Above) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii
A Settler’s Family, ca. 1907-1915Digital color rendering.
© Library of Congress

(Above) Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.
Austrian Prisoners of War Near a Barrack, 1915
Digital color rendering. Click on image for larger view.
© Library of Congress

In the early years of the First World War, Prokudin-Gorskii photographed a group of prisoners of war from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The men are probably Poles, Ukrainians, and members of other Slavic nationalities, imprisoned at an unidentified location in the far north of European Russia near the White Sea. This image escaped being confiscated by border guards—the fate of the vast majority of politically sensitive images—when Prokudin-Gorskii left Russia for good in 1918—probably because what is being represented is not immediately obvious.


THE PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVES OF SERGEI MIKHAILOVICH PROKUDIN-GORSKII (1863-1944) offer a vivid portrait of a lost world—the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming revolution. His subjects ranged from the medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia, to the railroads and factories of an emerging industrial power, to the daily life and work of Russia’s diverse population.

In the early 1900s Prokudin-Gorskii formulated an ambitious plan for a photographic survey of the Russian Empire that won the support of Tsar Nicholas II. Between 1909-1912, and again in 1915, he completed surveys of eleven regions, traveling in a specially equipped railroad car provided by the Ministry of Transportation.
Prokudin-Gorskii left Russia in 1918, going first to Norway and England before settling in France. By then, the tsar and his family had been murdered and the empire that Prokudin-Gorskii so carefully documented had been destroyed. His unique images of Russia on the eve of revolution—recorded on glass plates—were purchased by the Library of Congress in 1948 from his heirs. For this exhibition, the glass plates have been scanned and, through an innovative process known as digichromatography, brilliant color images have been produced. This exhibition features a sampling of Prokudin-Gorskii’s historic images produced through the new process; the digital technology that makes these superior color prints possible; and celebrates the fact that for the first time many of these wonderful images are available to the public.

We know that Prokudin-Gorskii intended his photographic images to be viewed in color because he developed an ingenious photographic technique in order for these images to be captured in black and white on glass plate negatives, using red, green and blue filters. He then presented these images in color in slide lectures using a light-projection system involving the same three filters. He did this by using a single, narrow glass plate about 3 inches wide by 9 inches long that was placed vertically into the camera by Prokudin-Gorskii . He then photographed the same scene three times in a fairly rapid sequence using a red filter, a green filter and a blue filter.

You can read the entire method for converting Prokudin-Gorskii’s B&W images to color by clicking here. As well, you can see many more images.

All copy and images above are copyright © Library of Congress.

Mid-Century America in Color, 1939 - 1943

(Above) Click image for much larger view! Worker at carbon black plant. Sunray, Texas, 1942. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Worker at carbon black plant John Vachon. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress


(Above) Click image for much larger view! Barker at the grounds at the state fair. Rutland, Vermont, September 1941. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress


(Above) Click image for much larger view! Backstage at the “girlie” show at the state fair. Rutland, Vermont, September 1941. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! At the Vermont state fair. Rutland, Vermont, September 1941. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! Jack Whinery, homesteader, and his family. Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! Men remove their hats before saying grace at barbeque dinner at the New Mexico Fair. Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! School children singing. Pie Town, New Mexico, October 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Russell Lee. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! Boy building a model airplane as girl watches. Robstown, Texas, January 1942. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Arthur Rothstein. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! A Fourth of July celebration. St. Helena Island, South Carolina, 1939. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! African Americans fishing in creek near cotton plantations. Belzoni, Mississippi, October 1939. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! A store with live fish for sale. Vicinity of Natchitoches, Louisiana, July 1940. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! African American migratory workers by a “juke joint”. Belle Glade, Florida, February 1941. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! Children aiming sticks as guns, lined up against a brick building. Washington, D.C.(?), between 1941 and 1942. Reproduction from color slide. Photographer Unknown. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! House. Washington, D.C.(?), between 1941 and 1942. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Louise Rosskam. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! Women workers employed as wipers in the roundhouse having lunch in their rest room, Chicago and Northwest Railway Company. Clinton, Iowa, April 1943. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Jack Delano. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! At Beecher Street School. Southington, Connecticut, May 1942. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by Fenno Jacobs. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



(Above) Click image for much larger view! Rural school children. San Augustine County, Texas, April 1943. Reproduction from color slide. Photo by John Vachon. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress



THESE IMAGES, by photographers of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, are some of the only color photographs taken of the effects of the Depression on America’s rural and small town populations. The photographs are the property of the Library of Congress and were included in a 2006 exhibit Bound for Glory: America in Color.

Via Denver Post.