Joanna, what a wonderful article...a million thanks for posting the link.
"It is not known to this day what specifically Nicholas II talked to Prokudin-Gorsky about or what licence he issued the man; we only know the results. Prokudin-Gorsky was given permission to visit any place in the Russian Empire, including the most restricted areas. The Ministry of Transportation provided him with a comfortably equipped railway car specially fitted out for the artist (one half of it served as his living quarters and the other housed his photography laboratory). Local officials rendered all kinds of real assistance to the tsar’s favourite, instead of only pretending to assist as was frequently the case. Prokudin-Gorsky succeeded in visiting eleven areas. Midland Russia, the Russian North (he photographed, among other things, the construction of the railway spur to Romanov-on-Murman, today’s Murmansk, a top secret project during the Wold War I), Central Asia, Siberia, the Urals… ancient Russian monasteries, the new bridges of the Trans-Siberian Railway line, and the tea-packing factories in Georgia – nothing escaped Proskudin-Gorsky’s lenses. An extraordinary spectrum of human types, from the Emir of Bukhara who could rival a sumo wrestler to Bukhara melon seller: this type has survived into the 21st century.
Apparently the photographer knew the road northward best. He had no illusions after the October coup d’etat, and it was the northern road that he took to flee Russia, first to Norway and from there to Britain and France. Well, the wizards of the North must have done a good job – the master survived along with his collection. How he managed to take out over two thousand glass plates is a mystery. He was hardly aware of the fate that had befallen Maxim Dmitriyev, another great Russian photographer: only a few of his works survived because his plates were either just smashed (as a lesson to the bourgeois) or utilized to build proletarian hothouses."
Sunny
