Russia, 100 Years Ago, In Color

If you don't visit The Boston Globe's Big Picture on a regular basis, might I suggest you start doing so?  This website is simply amazing, and is by far one of my favorite quick decompressors at work (imagine that...a social worker needs to decompress occasionally).  The Big Picture is basically news stories in photographs, but the quality of the photos, as well as the information conveyed by them is simply spectacular.  What's wonderful about the photographs is that you can see so much of the rest of the world and truly get a glimpse into the daily lives of those who live there.  The Big Picture covers the major news events, but also those events which may or may not be receiving as much media coverage.

Yesterday, the editor published some of the most amazing photographs I have ever seen on the site (which is pretty amazing, but the quality of the shots are by far and away outstanding).  He writes:

With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time - when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948.

And then goes on to blow your mind with the photos he selected.  Here are my personal favorites (remember these photos are one hundred years old!):

You can see the full article here.  All photos belong to the Library of Congress.