Siergiej Michajłowicz Prokudin-Gorski i jego kolorowe fotografie „Splendorów Rosji” z czasów Mikołaja II
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorski and his colour photographs from the time of Tsar Nicholas II, ‘The Splendours of Russia’

Summary/Abstract: In April 2001 on the server of the Library of Congress (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/prokquery.html) a unique collection of colour photographs by the Russian chemist and inventor S. M. Prokudin-Gorski (1863-1944; 37 il. 9, 15) was made available. The collection was purchased in 1948 from the photographers sons. It contains over 2600 photographs (1902 of the photographs have their glass plate negatives preserved as well). Most of the photographs are the fruits of an expedition, undertaken under the patronage of Tsar Nicholas II, with the aim of documenting ‘The Splendours of Russia in natural colour’. They represent monuments of history and art, the achievements of modern technology, vast landscapes, as well as portraits (ills. 10-15). The Tsars protégé covered thousands of kilometres, from Finland to Afghanistan and from Tobolsk to Kovno (Kaunas). He immortalised the north of Russia, Central Asia, Western Siberia, the Urals and the recently gained countries of the Caucasus, as well as sites connected with the Napoleonic campaign of 1812. The photographs were created using Maxwell’s method of aligning three plates, further highlighted by RGB filters, the colours of the final product being simply captivating. The high resolution scans of monochrome diapositives and their colour layerings (digichromatography) have for four years been capturing the attention of scholars of art, old photography and enthusiasts of computer graphics.

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