Discussions about Russian History > Imperial Russian History

The Prokudin-Gorski photo collection

(1/3) > >>

JamesAPrattIII:
The library of congress , loc.gov has posted online the Prokudin-Gorski photo collection of Russia from 1908-12. it has 2606 pictures some in color of the Russian Empire "before the Storm" as one might say. I found it mentioned on the great war forum and looked through it and I am sure most of us here will like it.

Rodney_G.:

--- Quote from: JamesAPrattIII on March 05, 2014, 04:16:32 PM ---The library of congress , loc.gov has posted online the Prokudin-Gorski photo collection of Russia from 1908-12. it has 2606 pictures some in color of the Russian Empire "before the Storm" as one might say. I found it mentioned on the great war forum and looked through it and I am sure most of us here will like it.

--- End quote ---

I've seen his "Photographer To The Tsar"  book/album. (Hope that's the right title.) It contains  some of his  color photos from that collection, but certainly not all 2606. Quite beautiful. Some of the shots of  the central Asian regions look  like they could have been taken yesterday ,with the sands, primitive buildings,and even male dress. Too bad he didn't photograph the IF in color.

I look forward to seeing what the LOC collection has.

edubs31:

--- Quote from: JamesAPrattIII on March 05, 2014, 04:16:32 PM ---The library of congress , loc.gov has posted online the Prokudin-Gorski photo collection of Russia from 1908-12. it has 2606 pictures some in color of the Russian Empire "before the Storm" as one might say. I found it mentioned on the great war forum and looked through it and I am sure most of us here will like it.

--- End quote ---

2,606 photos and none of the IF? Even though the Tsar himself commissioned the project?

Impossible! Or maybe just incredibly frustrating. Possibilities?

1) Nicholas or Alexandra didn't think if appropriate for their family to be photographed in color (but for what reason?)
2) There were a number of photographs taken but simply lost/destroyed post-revolution (but why then did so many other IF photos survive?)
3) The photos very much exist and are simply stashed away in someone's private collection...likely this person is unaware they are the owner of such royalty gold or else they would have surfaced by now

Forum Admin:
The P-G process of color photography was very cumbersome and difficult, requiring three cameras and took a long time.  It is believed that he did take photographs of the IF, but they were kept by the family not part of the huge project Nicholas commissioned (which is why they aren't in the LoC collections.)  The photographs of the Imperial Family were almost certainly destroyed and/or lost during the Bolshevik period, if they did ever exist.  The same thing happened to the phonograph recordings OTMAA made for their Grandmother Marie Feodoorovna, who kept them in the Anitchkov and they have never been seen since.

edubs31:

--- Quote from: Forum Admin on March 06, 2014, 09:17:56 AM ---The P-G process of color photography was very cumbersome and difficult, requiring three cameras and took a long time.  It is believed that he did take photographs of the IF, but they were kept by the family not part of the huge project Nicholas commissioned (which is why they aren't in the LoC collections.)  The photographs of the Imperial Family were almost certainly destroyed and/or lost during the Bolshevik period, if they did ever exist.  The same thing happened to the phonograph recordings OTMAA made for their Grandmother Marie Feodoorovna, who kept them in the Anitchkov and they have never been seen since.


--- End quote ---

Make sense to me. Tragic really to think that these items were destroyed.

Is the reason why we have so many photos of the family preserved because they appeared in their private photo albums that were kept with the family? What percentage of photos of the IF that exist to this day would you say were part of those albums? 

Those color photos in the Gorski collection I'm sure were considered rare and valuable and naturally kept separate from the amateur pictures the family took of themselves on a daily basis. But there are many other formal photos of the family that have survived. Is that because they were mass distributed, unlike the color photos, or is there some other explanation to why we have the black & white formals and not the Gorski colored ones?

In other words...why weren't they kept together, and if they were, why weren't they all lost or destroyed?

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

Go to full version