Wow.

In a complete deviation from my usual content, I'd like to share some incredible pictures of Russia from 100 years ago which I just stumbled upon over at The Boston Globe.

Between 1909 and 1912, a photographer by the name of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii used a revolutionary new system in which three monochrome photos were taken in quick succession, each with a red, green or blue filter. Putting the three (glass) plates on top of one another created these stunning pictures.

It's impossible to judge the age of these pictures from their quality. And it completely boggles my mind to think that the people featured, even the children, may have grown up to have children, grandchildren, even great-grandchildren and so on.

It's worth viewing the full article here, as it's completely fascinating. But here's a few of the 36 pictures featured.


I wonder who he grew up to be...

Even history had its history...


If you look really closely, you can see the ripples in the water are different colours, due to their movement between the stages of process mentioned above...


I love this picture. The water looks so smooth, almost as if it's ice. Probably a byproduct of the photography technique again.

The detail in this image is staggering.


Look closely - some of the people in the background moved between the three pictures being taken. Little imperfections like this show just how precise the process was in order to have taken such crystal-clear clarity in the rest of the picture.

(All images are out of copyright, but reproduced here with thanks to The Boston Globe and the LOC)

Comments (1)

On 24 November 2010 at 04:28 , Anonymous said...

I can‘t believe those pictures shooted in 100years ago.incredible flesh colors,unbilievable surfase texture....

sitting boy is(was?) completely sat boy.and he forget his dead.that`s strenge experience for me same as when I saw living samurai in pictures.