A Sight to Behold...

Just in case you're one of the few sentient beings left on the planet to whom I haven't ranted and raved yet today, here is the face of one of the most amazing men of the 20th century:

"But who is this?" you ask in bewilderment. "He is no revolutionary, no politician. He is no criminal, no warrior, and no statesman." No to all of these. Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky was a chemist and a photographer.

Prokudin-Gorsky was born in Murom, Russia (about 190km east of Moscow), in 1863. He grew up studying chemistry under Mendeleev and photography and music both in St. Petersburg and Berlin. When he returned from Europe to Russia, he began applying for patents for his development of a system to take--and get this--color photographs.

Essentially, his system of his photography involved taking three monochromatic photos through three differently colored filters. By then layering these photos under what the correct lighting conditions, Prokudin-Gorsky developed the first genuine color photograph, rather than the hand-colored prints that had existed previously. Now, instead of smearing color over a black and white photo, mangling details and creating a hazy kind of image that looked more like an oil painting than a photo like so:

Prokudin-Gorsky could create portraits like these:

You know who that is? Leo Tolstoy. It's the only color photograph of Tolstoy in existence. And, despite the fact that this photograph is 102 years old, you can see the lines in the Great Man's forehead; you can trace the weave of the linen in his shirt; you can follow the shadows across his birch chair. He is a living, breathing human being, no longer a black-and-white memory or a greeting card image. Granted, the camera required a few minutes of exposure in order to create a picture, and any movement within the frame resulted in some truly unsettling 'ghosts' in the picture, but, with a little work, the world suddenly took on a whole new perspective.

And, like the all-around incredibly awesome gentleman he was, Prokudin-Gorsky decided to use his new-fangled technology not to make money, and not to make a name. He decided he wanted to teach the school children of the Russian Empire about their homeland. Because the Russian Empire was so bewilderingly large (now broken into over 20 countries and comprising the largest contiguously governed land mass on earth), and because industrialization was threatening to alter the landscape of the country, Prokudin-Gorsky petitioned the Czar to preserve the Empire on film. And in color.

In 1909, he was given a specially-equipped railroad darkroom and permits that would allow him entrance to government-restricted areas. He would spend the next six years traveling from the Urals to Lake Baikal, from St. Petersburg to Irkutsk, from the edge of Europe to the shores of the Bering Sea, photographing landscapes, buildings, settlements and, most awe-inspiring to me, people. Older farmers with faces so parched and lined as to be nearly expressionless. Children, who squinted curiously at this strange apparatus that was capturing their expressions, their movements, the colors in their clothes and in the fields around them.

He photographed religious leaders and cultural icons, like the Emir of Bukhara, Mohammad Elim Khan--supposedly a direct descendant of Genghis Khan, who invaded Russia in the 14th century, and one of the last and most violent opponents of Bolshevik rule in post-revolutionary Russia:

I mean, seriously. Look at this photograph. The brain almost fails to recognize it as a relic of a dead empire. Mohammad Elim Khan died in 1944 in exile after violently opposing the Bolshevik invasion of Bukhara. This photograph was taken before the development of digital photography, before the Internet, before The Wizard of Oz, before the wristwatch. Before modern zipper. And yet, he could be sitting by that doorway today.

Black and white photography preserved some spectacular memories for future generations, and I would not begrudge a single image. But because of them, I think our perception of history tends to be similarly monochromatic. 'The Olden Days' were dull. They were bland and they were dull. Prokudin-Gorskii smashed that theory to dust. The past was blazing with color. People were as varied and as creative and as passionate then as now. Perhaps even more so, without the homogeneity engendered by things like the Internet and the television and the omni-present mobile phone.

In fact, looking again at these pictures, it makes me wonder if we aren't the ones who have grown a wee bit monotone. If we've become so inured to the garishness of the present that it all doesn't just blend together and become forgotten. To see the costumes of these Caucasian children, or the robes of Mohammad Khan makes a lot of today's frills and furbelow seem just a little anemic.

History is always shown as black and white. Or, at best, as hazy colors. Dreamscapes that are somehow inaccessible, that require interpretation and explanation. Then I see things like this:

And, to me, this is magic. Because it is still alive. And it is beautiful.

Prokudin-Gorsky was forced to flee the fledgling Soviet Union after the 1917 Revolution. He moved around Europe, eventually settling, like so many former Russian aristocrats, in Paris, where he set up a studio and gave lectures on the world of pre-revolutionary Russia until his death in 1944. Four years later, the Library of Congress purchased his photographs and negatives from his family for about $5,000. They have been regularly displayed since then, and about eight years ago were fully restored and digitally preserved, thus ensuring that another century of scholars can get a view at these spectacular memories.

I wonder if Prokudin-Gorsky knew how vitally and immediately important his pictures would be. I do know that when I first saw them during my junior year of college, I forgot the point of the lecture I was attending. I stopped listening to everything and just stared. And may, as you can see, have become just a little obsessed. But I was completely thrilled to see that today's Boston Globe took the time to remember Prokudin-Gorsky and the world he preserved. And I thought you might like to see it, too.