Prokudin-Gorskii's Color Photography

The current exhibition (September 28, 2009 – February 28, 2010) at The Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis is Photographer to the Tsar: Revealing the Silk Road. The exhibit features the work of Sergei M. Prokudin-Gorskii. Prokudin-Gorskii was one of the pioneers of color photography. Between 1907 and 1915 he documented Russia's Central Asian territories and other regions of the Russian Empire.

My favorite photo in the exhibit is the Fabric Merchant of Samarkand. Sergei M. Prokudin-Gorskii used a special camera that made three black-and-white images through three separate color filters. The Library of Congress online exhibit The Empire That Was Russia describes this photographic process and shows examples of his work. The Library of Congress made digital color images from Prokudin-Gorskii's negatives.

images from the Library of Congress