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Some people dream small, some dream big, and generations can thank Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky for having a vision as big as the Russian Empire itself.

His goal was to make a photographic record of the Russian people, in all their diversity and in color, but it wasn’t simply a matter of point, click, and hop the next train. This project was a lifetime in the making, beginning with the unique process he used to take the shots:

The process used involved a camera that would take a set of three photographs. These pictures would be monochrome but each picture would be taken using a filter of a different color. When all three monochrome pictures were projected (using light which had to be specifically colored) then the original color scene could be reconstructed. However, this took some time to take – hardly the point and click we are used to a century on – and so occasionally in Prokudin-Gorsky’s work you can see stray movements…

Even though Prokudin-Gorsky hailed from the noble class and married into a wealthy industrial family, a dream like this comes with a huge price tag and bureaucratic pull money can’t always buy.

Fortunately, a color photograph he took of Tolstoy caught the attention of Tsar Nicholas II, and the fruits of his labor are a truly stunning documentation of a lost world.

Full story at Kuriositas via Presurfer.

Snapshots of history.