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.

Womb with a View

(Above) Baby elephant in womb.

(Above) Baby dolphin.
(Above) Baby shark. Yikes!
(Above) Baby penguin in egg.
(Above) Baby penguin #2.
(Above) Baby penguin #3.

(Above) Puppy in womb.
(Above) Puppy in womb, #2.
(Above) Puppy in womb, #3.
(Above) Puppy in womb, #4.
(Above) Puppy in womb, #5.

CHECK OUT THESE INCREDIBLE EMBRYONIC ANIMAL PHOTOGRAPHS OF dolphins, dogs, sharks, penguins and elephants. They are previews are from a new National Geographic documentary called “Extraordinary Animals in the Womb.” The producer of the show, David Chin, used a combination of three-dimensional ultrasound scans, computer graphics and tiny cameras to capture the process from conception to birth. Amazing!

Via ThisBlogRules.

Ammo Box Labels

IN THESE SAMPLES, AMMUNITION BOX LABELS take the form of utilitarian, informational labels to more designed, sporting looks.

Via Rueben Miller.

Odd, Strange and the Everyday

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FOR ALMOST 15 YEARS, I HAVE SEARCHED FOR ODD AND UNIQUE PHOTOGRAPHS. The collection you see here is really nice. No matter how we might think that times today are strange, trust me, people have always been odd. Mean spirited, boring, physically challenged, racist, strange, bizarre, everyday, strange, “normal”... whatever life gives us—for 150 years, the camera has been there to document who we are. Enjoy these photos that remind us that even great grandma had to deal with the bizarre. Go back as far as you want—life has always been strange.

Photos via Joe Jet.

Comic Book Ads from the 60’s

(Above) THIS was the ad that started it all.


(Above) “HEY KIDS!” the number one most over-used phrase in sales promotion. Click on any image for larger view.


(Above) Juicy Fruit ad, 1960s. Uh-h duh-h, let’s see, where are the safety hazards! Click on image for larger view.


(Above) A “Frontier Cabin” for a buck. Click on image for larger view.

(Above) Oh yea, kids! Be a shoe salesman! Be cool! Click on image for larger view.
Click on image for larger view.

(Above) This guy is sorta creepy. And he teaches ART lessons!


I WAS A VORACIOUS READER OF COMIC BOOKS AS A KID IN THE 1960s. IT WAS COMIC BOOKS THAT SPURRED MY IMAGINATION, HELPED ME LEARN TO LOVE READING, and put me in touch with some of the crappiest products I ever experienced.

Yes, comic book advertising! It was unregulated and targeted children with visions of prizes beyond their wildest dreams. BB-Guns, sporting equipment, art lessons, bicycles and the best crappy prize of all time, X-Ray Specs. You could get many of the same prizes through many different advertising schemes, by sending in cash OR sending in a coupon for a sales incentive program. So, since I didn’t have two nickels to rub together, I send in my “free” coupon to one scam and two weeks later I received a rectangular box of flower seeds that I was supposed to SELL!

Each box was filled with something like 50 packs of flower and vegetable seeds, and I was supposed to sell them all. If I remember correctly, they were something like 10¢ a pack. They might have been as cheap as a nickel a pack. But I sold ’em, and sold ’em like crazy! I sold them to my mother, neighbors, relatives, and strangers door-to-door. It’s amazing what incentives will do to drive sales! And of course, what prize did I want more than anything? Let’s see. Hmmm. I was a boy and about 10 or so years old. Have you guessed it? Yep. The X-Ray Specs!

And could I see through the clothes of the cute 14-year year old girl next door? Not! When I received the prize and opened the box, well, the first thing was wrong is that the lenses were solid and painted on the front like swirling vortexes in bright red ink... not too subtle. I realized that if I was to try them out on her (which I certainly intended to do!) I would have been spotted a block away—looking like the clown I NOW was! So I opened the box and put them on. WTF? (Of course, I didn’t have the WTF lingo down yet!) But still, I was just... disappointed. What did I know about “the fine print?”

Turns out the “x-ray” lens was just a hole the size of a BB inside the middle of a cardboard lens... with what looked like a piece of a little feather put inside the hole. Whaaaat? (Yes, I finally took it apart.) The tiny little fibers of the feather (when they were close to your eyes) made things like your hand look vaguely like you “might” be looking at the bones in your hand.

The saga of the X-Ray Specs was not the first, but the beginning of MANY disappointments in my life.