100 year old color pictures of Russia found

[Contrary1]

Really nice scenes.



http://www.newsweek.com/id/214585

[Stephanie]

1. To Moscow, to Moscow, to Moscow!

[PM Martin]

2. What type of technology did they have at the time?

[Contrary1]

5. There's an explanation as to how the photograper did this.

It's in the second paragraph as you scroll. Sorry, it won't allow me to copy.

[nc4bo]

8. It says on the sidebar. 3 separate photos with 3 color filters (red, green, blue) then combined.

Really amazing.

[Stephanie]

9. The site says he took three separate images in red, blue & green

Amazing.

[Stephanie]

12. Wow - it's very cool!

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

[liberalpragmatist]

44. They were intended to be shown as projection slides

He would shoot them on glass slides in three tones, and project them. Digital technology allows us to view them as photographs.

[pepperbear]

49. they look like they were taken yesterday. funny how color can humanize an era.

[Kablooie]

61. They weren't able to see them in color like this but they knew that sometime it would be possible.

[Captain Hilts]

62. I think it was three strip color, kinda like technicolor. nt

[nc4bo]

3. How beautiful and amazing. nt

[eShirl]

4. ooooooooooo! k&r

[Kaylee]

6. Amazing....but completely throwing me off..

I am looking at people from 1909 and they aren't in grainy sepia tones.

[Berry Cool]

7. These photos are incredible.

Not only in color, but so crisp and clear that they look as if they were taken yesterday. You feel as if you could step right into the photos and talk to the people.

I have never seen photos that bring the past so alive. Thanks for the pointer.

[malaise]

10. Fascinating

Thanks

[Stephanie]

11. More here - absolutely amazing

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

[malaise]

19. I was looking at those

They are unbelievably beautiful - the clarity is breath-taking

[KittyWampus]

21. the photographer's life would make an amazing biographical subject for a film.

[tabasco]

13. How cool is that!?

Thanks!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. Stunning. Thanks for posting. K&R

[armyowalgreens]

15. My brain refuses to admit that those photos are 100 years old.

[Creena]

16. Stunning.

The explanation of how he captured the pictures is fascinating. On a funny note, $10 that Glenn Beck sees Obama in the clouds.

[KittyWampus]

17. Incredible and breathtaking!

[MadMaddie]

18. Ole Beck will have a cardiac!! Oh....Noos.....

:crazy: :silly:

[G_j]

20. wow!

awesome,
maybe the first color photos ever taken ?

[DURHAM D]

22. Amazing - just sent link to my nephew who is a Russian scholar. nt

[Libertas1776]

23. I absolutely love

old photographs like these, especially these extraordinary, early color photos. In really reanimates the past, making 100 years ago seem like only yesterday. I love it.

Here is one of the earliest known color photographs, a photo of Agen, France in 1877 (looks like it could have been taken in 1977)


and here is a rather extraordinary "auto-chrome" picture of a nurse and two patients (presumably soldiers) in Moreuil, France, 1916.

http://press.princeton.edu/blog/dawn-of-the-color-photograph/

[juno jones]

24. Amazing photos.

What a window into the past.

[Windy]

25. Incredible. Thank you for sharing! nt

[aikoaiko]

26. #5 Tolstoy!!!!!!!!!!!!

marvelous.

[knitter4democracy]

27. Looking at them makes my heart hurt.

The only place other than Michigan that has ever felt like home to me was Russia. I could've stayed in Nizhni Novgorod and lived there so easily after my semester in college was over. I miss it very badly.

[Toucano]

28. WOW! n-t

[Canuckistanian]

29. Astounding.

I'm always amazed at color pics from WWII.

But these pics are Pre-WWI. The detail and vibrance are stunning.

Thanks for posting!

[FirstLight]

30. amazing... no buildings or pollution..

the skyline is what blows my mind, i am sure there are huge buildings, roads and wires, etc in many of those views now...and the one of the bridge across the river? imagine...no boats, gasoline pollution in he water...that's why the water is so still & clear...


truly a view into the past... *sigh* too bad our world is so full of pollution now, visual audio and otherwise...


( I grew up with a big view from our deck over the SF bay, i used to sit there as a kid, squint my eyes and dream about what it would have looked like without the buildings or tankers, just tipis and canoes... before the land was 'claimed'...)

[Maru Kitteh]

31. Those photographs are STUNNING. So much that they look like character actors on modern film

and stage sets.

I'm blown away.

[mdmc]

34. kick

[damntexdem]

32. Color pictures, or colorized?

Colorizing black-and-white pictures used to be a big thing.

[JAbuchan08]

46. The story explains.

That the photographer took consecutive pictures in red green and blue creating a natural effect by combining the three. No tint was added.

[Liberal_in_LA]

47. amazing

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

33. These photos were revealed several years ago.

Still neat though.

[BlooInBloo]

35. Nice. This inspired me to go look up HDR, and I learned it was first done in the 1850s. Cool!

[KatyMan]

36. Kind of proves

tha people in the past were the same as us, only different.

[GreenArrow]

37. very nice.

Really a pleasure to be able to see these. Thanks for posting.

[Odin2005]

38. Wow! Love the pick of Tolstoy!

:wow:

[dugaresa]

39. so very beautiful, it is so sad photography wasn't around for 3000 years`

would help clear up a lot of misconceptions.

the photos were beautiful.

[AlphaCentauri]

40. Picture #19, is that a Burqa?

[BanzaiBonnie]

41. Beautiful - Thank you

Those are amazing

[liberalpragmatist]

42. They've been around for awhile

I posted these a few years ago - they're really stunning.

The Library of Congress has owned them for years. A book was even published with them in the '80s, but in the early 2000s, about 100 of them were digitally restored (which did involve some manipulation in some of them) and put on exhibit. (There are several hundreds more, though they're a little scratched. You can see them on the LoC's website.)

[liberalpragmatist]

43. Also, here's a color photo of Mark Twain

These were part of an exhibit at a London museum called "The Dawn of Colour." These photos were mostly autochrome, so a different methodology than the Prokudin-Gorskii pictures.

[JAbuchan08]

45. Better than most color photographs, the richness of color is incredible

It's so real.

[yodermon]

48. I suspect a fair bit of computing power went into cleaning up these images

Which, mind you, in no way detracts from the magnificence of these pictures!


eg

"While still in grayscale mode,
the red(R), blue(B), and green(G) layers are aligned forming the “RGB” color composite.
This registration process is
the most difficult step."




from http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html, posted up-thread.

[glinda]

50. Lovely. Wonder if any of the people in the pics are my relatives. Hmmmmmm.

[Control-Z]

66. i'm wondering the same. n/t

[Hekate]

51. What an incredibly diverse place it was/is; Christians, Muslims, Jews, tribal peoples...

Cathedrals, monasteries, mosques, shuls ... this photographer captured them all. It makes you realize how very much a part of Asia Russia is.

Thank you for sharing.

Hekate

[AzDar]

52. Awesome. Thanks for posting this...

:hi:

[LibDemAlways]

53. Wow. Thanks for sharing. As an aside, I can now

better understand why an employee in one of the cathedrals in St. Petersburg last summer assumed my daughter was Russian. The girl in the center in photo #4 could be her twin!

[Selatius]

54. I feel sadness for those people seen in the pictures, especially the three young girls.

Little do they know their nation would be rocked by a violent revolution and two devastating world wars that will claim millions of Russian lives within their lifetime.

[Maru Kitteh]

55. But in that moment - those things did not exist. I took the final photo of my grandmother

just a couple of weeks before she passed. She was warm, smiling and very happy. Sometimes it's better to be able to remember who and what you loved, as you loved it.

Sometimes it's almost as if - in some way - photography can keep them there. Where they were happy.

[alfredo]

67. These girls. Yeah, life was not kind to the people of Russia.

[Matariki]

56. So amazing. Thanks for posting this.

[DeschutesRiver]

57. Just can't thank you enough for the links (and also to those who added photos here).

I am a history buff; I hadn't come across these photos before, and am going through them with a new appreciation of historical settings and where life was lived every day. Seeing these adds another layer and a lot of depth to some of my understanding of things (I also studied Russian history for a couple of years in college, so the russian photos are esp. fun for me to see).

Absolutely the coolest thing I've seen this year:) Thanks so much again.

[TankLV]

58. Just truely breathtaking!!!

Thanks for these!!!

[arundhatiroyfan]

59. k&r. nt.

[Vidar]

60. Gorgeous pictures!

[BrightKnight]

63. The people are amazing

[druidity33]

64. this one

could be an Arbus or other depression era photog:

[BrightKnight]

65. It was an expensive aristocratic craft but most images are WPA like.

Photography at that time would have been practiced by the upper class. The photographer apparently had ties to the Czar and the revolution was only a few years away. It is amazing that 99% of the thousands of images in this collection are WPA like images of common people. He was also apparently fascinated with heavy equipment and industrialization. There is no hint of revolutionary passion.

[mdmc]

68. kick