~ ONE JOURNEY ~

~ There is only one journey: going inside yourself. ~
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Prokudin-Gorskii ~ Thursday, December 09, 2004

I first heard about him a few years ago, but we were at a dinner last night and the subject of photography came up--so, I just had to jump in with a non-sequitur about him.

Prokudin-Gorskii lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century and he developed a technique whereby he could create full, equisitely coloured, vibrant photographs in the early twentieth century (i.e. before 1910).

The Tsar was so impressed that he commissioned a pictoral dictionary to be compiled, and financed the expedition.

The pictures are vibrant and fascinating, depicting a period of time that I always think of as being drab and dour, because usually the images we see of them are black and white--except here, they are as vivid as if they had been taken yesterday. It is somehow magical--or like uncovering a treasure of infinite value, to discover these, and to be able to see with them, a world without telephone wires and commuter airlines--in other words, a world far vaster and with far more mysteries than the one in which we live today.

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/



::Posted by Anduril Elessar @ 1:52 PM::::
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