The photographs of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) offer a vivid portrait of a lost world - the Russian Empire on the eve of World War I and the coming revolution.

Born in St. Petersburg and educated as a chemist, Prokudin-Gorskii devoted his career to the advancement of photography. In the early 1900s, he developed an ingenious technique of taking colour photographs. The same object was captured in black and white on glass plate negatives, using red, green and blue filters. He then presented these images in colour in slide lectures using a light-projection system involving the same three filters.

Around 1907 Prokudin-Gorskii envisioned and formulated a plan to use the emerging technological advancements that had been made in colour photography to systematically document the Russian Empire. Through such an ambitious project, his ultimate goal was to educate the schoolchildren of Russia with his "optical colour projections" of the vast and diverse history, culture, and modernization of the empire. The plan won the support of Tsar Nicholas II. Between 1909-1912, and again in 1915, Prokudin-Gorskii completed surveys of eleven regions, traveling in a specially equipped railroad car provided by the Ministry of Transportation. His subjects ranged from the medieval churches and monasteries of old Russia, to the railroads and factories of an emerging industrial power, to the daily life and work of Russia's diverse population.

In 1918, having lost all his money and property during the revolution, Prokudin-Gorskii went into exile, taking with him only his collection of nearly 2,000 glass-plate negatives and his photograph albums. The collection was purchased by the Library of Congress (LOC) in 1948 from his heirs.

In 2001, the number of glass plates have been scanned and, through an innovative process known as digichromatography, brilliant colour images have been produced. Virtual exhibition The Empire that Was Russia attracted millions of people throughout the world.

When I first saw Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs, I was so amazed and fascinated that immediately decided to try digichromatography myself. I have downloaded and restored over 60 images that you can see on this website.

Please note that these images are NOT colorized black and white photographs. They were actually taken in colour about hundred years ago!

Because of many years of negligent storing, most of the negatives are in very poor condition, and it takes me hours of scrupulous work to restore their original brilliance. It is just the beginning of the work and I am going to continue. Hundreds of unique colour images of the past are still waiting to be returned back to life.

Alex Gridenko