Nostalgia

The Russian Empire of Czar Nicholas II Captured in Color Photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

Sergei Michailowitsch Prokudin-Gorski

In 1909, the Russian chemist and photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863 – 1944) set out on a journey to capture all of Russia in colour for Czar Nicholas II. One of the pioneers of colour photography, Prokudin-Gorskii systematically documented the vast empire with the technique that he developed – using colour-sensitive glass plates – decades before the availability of colour film. His colour images were meant not only to document the vast diversity of the empire’s citizens, ethnicities, settlements, and landscapes, but to create nothing less than a common identity for its entire population. Prokudin-Gorskii’s knowledge and trained eye make his images particularly vibrant and timeless. A century later, they have lost none of their original beauty and intensity. Over 250 of these early masterpieces of colour photography, which have recently been painstakingly restored by the Library of Congress, will be showcased in Nostalgia and shown in Europe for the first time at Gestalten Space.