magical early color photography

tolstoy

apropos yesterday's post on russian literature, i came across (thanks to melissa of tiny happy) this marvelous collection of color photos taken by sergei prokudin-gorskii in the decade before the russian revolution. yes, you read that correctly, color photos taken at the beginning of the last century.

jaroslavl

prokudin-gorskii used a special camera that took 3 images at once and he used blue, green and red filters, then projected the images together to make the composite color image. you can read more about the process here. aside: i do realize the first two images are not color, but i wanted to share them anyway (you'll see why below).

peasant woman

the library of congress has digitized some of the collection and you can peruse it online here. but do go look at the spread that boston.com did of them - it's breathtaking. i have left the edges here, as they are when you download them from the library of congress site, as i think the process by which the negatives are put together is fascinating.

in the urals

these images simply take my breath away. it's revolutionary photography from a pre-revolutionary time. i'm completely blown away by them.

along the volga

i think the fact that they're in color makes them so much more alive and says something about a basic human need for color. i relate to them so much more because they're in color.

along the volga

the color also gives them a kind of timelessness that black and white photos of the same subjects simply don't have (see the top two).  many of them, i feel as if they could have been taken yesterday.

monastery

i realized also when i stumbled across them that i had been positively LONGING for some truly breathtaking photography. i'm really tired of that over-exposed, false-vintage look that's so prevalent everywhere in the blogosphere and on flickr.

windmill houses

and these magical little windmill houses provoke me so much more than all of the slick architecture magazine photography that abounds on pinterest.  and they're about as far as you can get from the "achingly poetic" shots of toast crumbs and empty coffee cups that are so in vogue.

peasant girls

and these girls? yes, they're posing for the camera in a way that's most decidedly not in fashion at the moment, but aren't they marvelous?

peasant woman

these photos (and the many more i perused on the library of congress site) fed my soul and irrigated my joy today and i hope they do yours as well.

happy weekend one and all!