Court Photographers

[Angie_H]

Welcome!  

[Scott]

Yes, FA, you are correct on Bergamasco and NAOTMAA.  However, I do believe Bergamasco took some early photos of the "N" portion of NAOTMAA.

[Forum Admin]

It may be possible Scott, I grant. Though I have never seen any. The only "young N" photos I have seen were done by Levitsky.

[Scott]

I did not remember any specific photos of Nicholas by Bergamasco.  However, I have a circa 1870 Bergamasco photo of Tsarevich Alexander (future Alexander III): .  It made sense to me that Bergamasco would have taken photos of other members of the family during the same time period, including a young Nicholas.

After a quick search, I notice that Charlotte Zeepvat credits the photos of Nicholas (and others) on pages 6 and 7 of "The Camera and the Tsars" to Bergamasco.  In addition, there is a 1899 photo of Alexandra, on page 10, credited to Bergamasco.

[JesseCairns]

Hi ;

One quick comment . . . or lament :  that Nicky never thought of having Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii take individual and family portraits in colour.   Anyone who is  familiar with Prokudin-Gorskii's genius work in colour fotography will know that the Tsar commissioned him in 1910 and 1915 to take fotos of Russia.   If you see the quality of P-G's work, then would it have not been glorious to have seen the Imperial Family in ---say, 1913 in gorgeous and clear closeup portraits?

See some of P-G's colour work :

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/images/p87_32x__00023_.jpg

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/images/p87-8086.jpg

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/images/p87-8052.jpg

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/I?prok:303:./temp/~pp_AHlG::displayType=1:m856sd=prokc:m856sf=20372:@@@mdb=prok

http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/I?prok:332:./temp/~pp_AHlG::displayType=1:m856sd=prokc:m856sf=20402:@@@mdb=prok


--Jesse

[Rodney_G.]

   As for many of us on the Forum, a huge part of my enjoyment of the IF and the larger world of Imperial Russia, say ca. 1860 to 1920, comes from photos of them (as well as by them.) In fact,it's almost impossible to think of them without visualing them at a given time and place and setting. I think with the profusion of photos of the Romanovs with which we're blessed, it's easy to take for granted how remarkable they are in a way.

 I mean this in both a technical, as well as an impressionistic sense. Even to me in the digital age, the quality and clarity of many of these photos are amazing. Depending on one's age and sense of history ,the period 1895-1920 can appear as nearly ancient history or our grandparents' , even our parents' time. And yet these photos convey often a wonderful sense of immediacy, even modernity in a way.
 Getting a true feel for OTMAA seems especially unimaginable without those pictures of them as infants, toddlers, children, and teenagers. Although writings by them and about them may remain paramount, I set great store in what I can read in the details of their faces, stances, clothes, others in the photo, etc. The early 20th century, so remote in some ways , is made incredibly close  for me , by these photos that to state the obvious , provide a literal glimpse of the IF's lives.

I haven't addressed the technical aspect of that photography simply because I can't fully appreciate the technological details, about which I invite comment as well.

Your observations?

[EmmyLee]

If you've ever read Nicholas & Alexandra: The Last Imperial Family of Tsarist Russia from the State Hermitage Museum, there is a very interesting section on the IF's photography as well as that of their photographers on pages 230-238. It says that not only did the IF take photos of each other, but they often had hired photographers running after them too.

I know what you mean, about other photos taken during the same time period, that they are not nearly as clear as some of the IF's. I too don't really understand how photography works, so it's amazing how the quality can be so good on some of them, especially for amateur photography!

[Rodney_G.]

  Also, though I'm so grateful we have the wonderful, vast profusion of IF photos that we do, I  do sort of regret that color photography wasn't sufficiently developed to be in wide use at the time in question. Photos in color were beginning in the early 1900's but very few photographers were proficient in making them. I've seen the album of russian scenes in color by Prokudin-Gorskii which Nicholas II commissioned  (post1903?) and the quality and color are excellent, and could pass for later 20th century vintage.

One wishes  the Emperor had had some done of the IF as well!  Modern colorization of original black and whites can be impressive but aren't a substitute for the real deal of the IF in living color.

[Rodney_G.]

  I must amend my post.  Of Pokudrin-Gorskii"s  scenes of Russian life, the earliest may have been 1905 and the rest mostly 1909- til WWI.

Also the book of P_G's  that I saw was indeed in color but had been colorized more recently. Pokudrin-Gorskii had developed a printing technique which allowed for a colorized image to be projected with slides.

[EmmyLee]

One wishes  the Emperor had had some done of the IF as well!  Modern colorization of original black and whites can be impressive but aren't a substitute for the real deal of the IF in living color.

Ah, but he did. In the book Photographs for the Tsar, it says that when Prokudin-Gorskii left Russia in 1918, he "left behind ten negatives of the Romanov royal family, about which he stated only that they were 'hidden in Russia.' To this day there is no evidence that they have been found. He managed to take only a photo of the Tsarevich with him."

If only those photos could be found if they survived the Soviet era! I'm not sure if that photo he had of Alexei was in color or was the one pictured elsewhere in the book.

[Joanna]

A list of Russian Court Photographers, their locations, and with some information of who they were attributed with among the Imperial Family:

http://www.rusalbom.ru/pridv-foto.html

Joanna