Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky

© Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky / Library of Congress (USA)

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky would definitely have been an Instagram hit! His portraits are impeccably composed with a square format that would have been perfect for the social media platform and its billion users.
His images, which record the diversity of the former Russian Empire for prosperity, would undoubtedly draw several million followers. Despite being so modern and contemporary, all these photographs were taken between 1905 and 1915! 

Prokudin-Gorsky was born in 1863. He was a trained chemist and member of the Russian Imperial Technical Institute, and later became one of the pioneers of contemporary photography. With his tutor Adolf Miethe, whom he met while studying in Germany, they explored the work of James Clerk Maxwell, who had produced the first colour photograph in history forty years previously. Using Maxwell’s technique to superpose three filters, they successively layered three monochrome plates, leading to the invention of the first colour slides.

He returned to Russia at the dawn of the 20th century and his photography made him famous among high society and Russian notables. In 1908, he produced the first official colour portrait of Russia’s best-known author, Leo Tolstoy.

In the wake of the 1905 Russian Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II gave him a vehicle fitted with a darkroom to document the Empire. For years, he captured the landscapes, way of life, traditions, habits and customs of Russian society. He travelled to more than 30 regions across the Empire, including areas that are now part of Belarus, Finland and Ukraine. A lifetime’s work in 10,000 photographs illustrating the immensity of a country with 200 million inhabitants spread out over almost 23 million km² at the time. 

When the tsarist regime was overthrown in 1917, Prokudin-Gorsky felt alienated and decided to leave Russia the following year. He found refuge in France while most of his work, left behind in his home country, was destroyed by the Bolshevik revolution. His work did not find an audience in France during his lifetime and it was his heirs who saved his photographic heritage, entrusting it to the American Library of Congress in 1948, where it remains today.

None of the photographs in this exhibition have been recoloured by hand. All have been carefully restored, but are presented in their original state.