The blog & portfolio of Matthew J. Rogers

Color photos from the 1910s

July 31, 2006

DamnInteresting.com has a great article about a Russian photographer who figured out an ingenious way to get full-color photos in an era of only black-and-white film. With the Tsar’s blessing, he set about documenting his country in its full glory. In the late 1940s, the United States Library of Congress purchased the collection and has recently made it available to the public in an exhibition called The Empire that was Russia. Many of the stunning pictures are available in an online gallery.

I think the buildings are particularly beautiful. Most interesting is the pictures of the people — so often, old black and white pictures of people don’t quite seem real to us, I think, because it looks like a different world. But seeing these vibrant color photos of Russian peasant girls from 1909, Russian Jews from 1911, and borderland settlers really makes you realize, as one commenter on DamnInteresting said, that “the world didn’t start with you.”

Feel free to comment here about your reaction to the photos.

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