Color Revolutions
If you think color film didn’t exist in 1909, you’re right. But Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, the man who captured Karlinsky’s image and thousands like it all over the Russian Empire and Europe, wasn’t one to be hindered by technicalities. Using color-filtered glass plates to capture a red, a blue and a green channel of each image, the chemist-turned-photographer was able to project dazzling pictures onto Russia’s walls long before the advent of Lumicolor and Kodachrome film in the 1930s. Since then, the U.S. Library of Congress has bought up his collection of monochrome plates and, in 2003, managed to merge the color channels into digital prints.
A prototype for the modern-day photojournalist, Prokudin-Gorsky (1863-1944) had one chief aim: “To leave a perfect document for the future.” The scientist, untroubled by modern-day notions that pure objectivity is illusory, set about this task with diligence. He photographed everything from workers posing in the fields to obscure religious relics and infrastructure projects. His work has indeed been used as he intended, to restore earthquake-damaged temples in 1908 and to aid the former Soviet Union in restoring churches in the 1990s. But what delighted audiences then, as it does anyone who stumbles upon Prokudin-Gorsky’s oeuvre today, are the colors.
It can be hard to look at an antique black-and-white photo and identify immediately with the faces that stare back. The prints are often blurry, the negatives scratched. It doesn’t help that while we choose to smile unnaturally before the camera, their fashion was to scowl. Granted, it’s easier to hold a scowl during a long exposure. But sullen, grayscale people don’t arouse our empathy. Seeing them in color reveals the people we should have been seeing all along.
It also makes palpable the awkwardness that invariably surrounds group photo shoots. One can almost hear the silence as a row of Greek peasant women and children abandon their picking for a moment to look skeptically into the lens. In the photos of Central Asian subjects, it’s often unclear whether the vibrant outfits worn by the subjects represent everyday attire or ceremonial garb hurriedly retrieved and put on for the occasion. If the latter is true, it’s a mark against Prokudin-Gorsky the documentarian, but a triumph for Prokudin-Gorsky the entertainer and his magic lantern show.
What’s most striking about Prokudin-Gorsky’s future Soviet Union is not the huge contrasts with the present, but the little continuities. A picture of an Uzbek soldier inadvertently showcases a bit of bright blue writing on the wall behind him. A little help translating reveals that it’s not an amateur advertisement or a public notice; it’s a tag. With all that befell humanity in the 20th century, it’s nice to know that one hundred years ago, “Ivan Karamov wrote this.”
More photos in the Winter 2008 issue of RUSSIA!