Color Photography ca. 1900
That picture was taken during Tsarist Russia by a man named Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, who lived from 1863-1944.
It was not digitally painted or otherwise colorized. It is a primitive color photograph using a cumbersome, but effective method detailed here.
Essentially, it was a three-lensed camera that took a black and white image with a red, blue, and green filter over each lens. When the images are developed, they appear mildly different. When a red, then green, then blue filter are placed over the image, the colors appear. The photograph above had this done with digital filters instead.
But what is so striking is the full, bright color of a 100-odd year-old image which really brings that period to life more than any black and white image can do. This is unbelievably cool.
Terry Says:July 30th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
Yes…I can almost smell the peasants….
peter scott Says:July 30th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
this is really interesting…
I was born in 1978…I have trouble thinking of things from the “black and white” era as “real”…its just a mental thing…but without being able to see it in color makes it seem fake…
Buffalo Blood Donor Says:July 31st, 2007 at 7:51 am
Silver halide - The chemistry that turns black when exposed to light, and then fixed by sodium thiosulfate, is remarkably stable and as such, with just a little care black and white photographs have survived for well over a hundred years. Most modern color photographs are created with a much more complex process whose chemistry is not nearly as stable, and as such they will be lost rather quickly. Colors fade more quickly. Mikhailovich’s process, which is based entirely on B&W chemistry, does not and did not. The color filters used to regenerate the original color photograph are easily replaced.
Similar projections can also be seen at the Eastman museum in Rochester. It is pretty remarkable.
Technicolor 4 movies were filmed in this very manner.
BBD
Mike from Grand Island Says:July 31st, 2007 at 8:34 am
Cool picture. Makes one nostalgic for the good old days when the streets were filled with manure and sewage. No one bathed all winter. Picture Kevin Kline sniffing his underarms in A Fish Called Wanda.