More Russian love! Believe it or not, these sumptuous, color soaked images were taken a century ago, from 1909 to 1912. According to the Big Picture, “Photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images.”
The thing that strikes me most about these portraits, besides their composition and the vibrancy of the colors, is the wide range of cultures and costuming within one (enormous) empire. Those two women at the top — that’s practically Renaissance-style, and only a century ago! It’s sad that so much traditional costuming has drifted away —perhaps resurrected from the back of the closet during high holidays — resulting in a homogenous blob of Calvin Klein t-shirts, muumuus (God love ‘em!) and cuffed jeans. Sigh. Oh, for a world where it’s not an ironic statement to wear a turban (for me, at least).
Another note: the Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog is such a great concept for a news source. Telling stories through huge, incredible pictures with minimal commentary? Maybe it’s the future of narratives, as attention spans shorten and visuals become so thoroughly entrenched in the internet landscape. My two cents!
