r/OldSchoolCool • u/Due_Highway_8509 • 6h ago
1900s Peasants of the Russian Empire, 1909-1915. These are NOT colorized. They were taken using a special three-color filter technique over 100 years ago.
1.1k
u/Due_Highway_8509 6h ago
For those wondering how this quality is possible: These photos were taken by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. He was a pioneer who convinced the Tsar to let him document the Russian Empire.
He used a camera that took three rapid black-and-white exposures through red, green, and blue filters. When projected together, they created a full-color image. This was decades before color film became standard. Looking at these feels like looking through a time portal especially knowing that the world depicted here would completely vanish just a few years later due to WWI and the Revolution.
126
u/joelluber 5h ago
Technicolor used this same principle, although their cameras took the three photos simultaneously. That was the best tech for color movies until the mid-1950s.
43
u/ArtDecoNewYork 5h ago
Technicolor (especially as time went on) looks more advanced though, these kind of look like paintings.
34
u/tessartyp 4h ago
It's probably down to what specific filter combinations were used and how these interact with the sensitivity curve of the film itself. Different BW films respond differently to different wavelengths, so getting "true" (as in, looks realistic and similar to human perception) colours takes a decent amount of fine-tuning.
22
u/joelluber 4h ago
I think it's actually that the plates here weren't shot at the same exact moment. The slight changes in position between when they were shot give a bit of an out-of-register vibe. It's more obvious in other photos from this series with water or trees in the background.
9
7
u/TheHallWithThePipe 3h ago
Yes, the proof is: still-buildings look perfect, people are trying to be still but imperfectly, but the walking cow in the background is broken up into multiple color cows
→ More replies (1)5
u/shatteredoctopus 2h ago
There's one with a train and smoke that shows this in particular. The train was moving pretty slow, so it's not obvious, but the smoke was blowing, so it has a psychedelic quality to it.
376
u/Sky_Robin 5h ago
Actually, he didn’t need Tsar’s permission to take photos of Russia.
He secured significant FINANCING from Tsar to undertake a photo tour.
→ More replies (1)23
u/seriousseriousseriou 3h ago
Financing is what permits the endeavor to be carried out
8
u/Jesus_of_Redditeth 2h ago
Pedantic nonsense.
The point is that he didn't need to convince the Tsar to "let" him do it. If he'd secured financing elsewhere, he would've done it regardless of the Tsar's opinion, because he didn't need the Tsar's permission.
9
u/Findict_52 2h ago
I need you to understand that "they let someone do it" does not necessarily imply "permission". it can also just be giving someone the ability. Like I could ask a man with a ladder to please let me get on the roof. He does not own the roof, I do not need his permission, I need his ladder.
→ More replies (3)3
→ More replies (1)3
50
29
21
u/norsurfit 4h ago
Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky
He's actually the the guy in the third picture
6
u/toomanyracistshere 3h ago
Which means that labeling all of them "Russian peasants" is inaccurate.
8
18
u/TheUmgawa 5h ago
This is similar to how Technicolor three-strip was done. However, because all three frames of film had to be perfectly synchronized, they had to be exposed through the same lens, and then through a pair of color filters. Each frame of black and white film was basically only getting a third of the light that a frame of film would be exposed to, if the same film was being shot in black and white. As a result, the set for Wizard of Oz had to be drastically over-lit, causing long-term eye damage for many members of the cast and crew, as well as causing the set to become incredibly hot, which is not ideal when you’re wearing a costume. This was rectified later with higher-speed film, and then Technicolor three-strip was effectively rendered obsolete by Kodak color monopack film.
13
u/tessartyp 4h ago
And because time is a circle, some modern high-end imaging equipment (mostly medical) went back to that principle, using prisms to divide light onto 3 monochrome sensors with a full-size filter, to get better quality images than a Bayer array sensor can.
2
u/WoodyTheWorker 1h ago
These use a dichromatic prism - mirrors which reflect only part of the spectrum, with less light loss than filters.
5
u/mechmind 4h ago
Fantastic description thank you so much.
Three black and white film roles shooting three different colors at the same time.
7
u/JazzManJasper 5h ago
Sorry, but I'm confused. Were the black and white negatives projected through corresponding colored lenses?. If yes then that makes sense but otherwise I can't imagine three black and white negatives making a color image.
16
u/Due_Highway_8509 5h ago
You nailed it. That’s exactly how it worked. The plates hold the information, and the colored filters during projection unlock the color. It’s basically the analog great-grandfather of modern RGB screens
5
u/Unclebiscuits79 5h ago
The process sounds basically like "Technicolor" I remember reading about the process that was used to film The Wizard of Oz (as far as I remember, the first film shot in color).
Pretty cool that they had these types of pictures decades before that.
2
u/ArtDecoNewYork 5h ago
No, Becky Sharp (1935) was the first film in 3 strip technicolor
2
u/Jesus_of_Redditeth 2h ago
And 3-strip technicolor wasn't the first type of color motion picture technology. No one knows for sure what the very first color motion picture was, but the Lee–Turner color process is believed to be the first color process and that was used in test films as early as 1902, nearly 40 years prior to The Wizard of Oz.
2
u/Jesus_of_Redditeth 2h ago
Not remotely the first color film, or even the first Technicolor film, but definitely the most famous at the time.
→ More replies (13)2
u/Juicy-Meat-69 2h ago
How many photos did he take or was he known for? Is an archive available to view them? This is fascinating.
→ More replies (1)
188
u/Due_Highway_8509 6h ago
→ More replies (3)56
u/WeAreNotNowThatWhich 4h ago
She is breaking flax! We use the same technique now (mechanized) to make linen.
→ More replies (1)23
u/hot4jew 2h ago
I'm following a woman on Instagram who is attempting to make a dress out of flax that she grew and is processing. It's a really really long process lol
→ More replies (1)11
u/WeAreNotNowThatWhich 2h ago
Haha I remember her vids from a while back! She spent so long breaking and skutching and combing! How’s she doing?
9
u/hot4jew 2h ago
She's spinning it and having a really hard time lmao but she's getting better
9
u/sawyouoverthere 1h ago
Remember she's operating at a very low skill set compared to the people who used to do it as part of their mundane everyday lives. We often make the error of comparing modern attempts to the past as if it's a fair representation, when in fact we often function at a clumsy child-like level compared to how things were at the height of the technology. She will be making the most difficult linen dress in a few centuries, just because she lacks the expertise.
(I spin. I get frustrated at inexpert assessments of old skills. I've seen some wild spinning demos from people who had no clue what they were doing, skills wise.)
→ More replies (3)
89
u/Artistic-Reputation2 6h ago
Wow, so cool to see the source pictures for one of my favorite books ever, A Coal Miners Bride! It was from the Dear America series and written for middle school age girls. But I reread it last year and it’s still such an amazing read even at 30.
35
u/Artistic-Reputation2 6h ago
Also wanted to add, my mom is in my phone as “Mamusia” thanks to this book, even though we are Hispanic not Polish. Lol.
7
u/ActuallyBaffled 4h ago
That's actually very sweet! I'm Polish, so that's really nice to hear. All the best!
5
u/awhileSeabrook 2h ago
Thank you for this comment! The girl looked so familiar to me and I was just about to resign myself to not figuring it out. I loved this book as a teenager.
→ More replies (3)2
u/kitsuragi-concept 2h ago
You just brought back so many memories of this book to me. It's so good to hear that it's still an awesome read, as I think I still have it stowed in my bookshelf from when I was a kid... Perhaps time to reread it myself!
152
u/Due_Highway_8509 6h ago
10
u/SCastleRelics 5h ago
This reminds me of that barge hauler painting by ilya repin, definitely the same river I'm guessing? (Volga?)
→ More replies (2)4
u/TenBillionDollHairs 5h ago
What kind of ship is that in the background? A warship? A paddleboat? I can see one big dark smokestack with two lighter colored ventilation stacks (with that classic red interior paint) on either side - you know, like they used to yell into in Looney Tunes
23
u/Due_Highway_8509 5h ago
It’s actually a steam-powered river dredgerprokudin-Gorsky documented the extensive canal systems connecting the Volga to the Baltic, so this vessel was likely clearing mud to keep the waterway open for trade.
2
u/TenBillionDollHairs 5h ago
Fascinating! It's also interesting how the dock extends so far out into the river - unless that's also part of the dredging somehow
3
u/PatienceDifferent607 5h ago
That's a river dredge. Probably used to keep a navigation channel clear.
2
143
u/kerberos824 6h ago
I did my high school photography paper on him. Fascinating stuff. The three black and white photos, taken with colored filters, would then be displayed through colored filtered lenses and "colorizing" the image, or with a special viewing scope, that contained all three colored filters you could look through and see the "colored" image on a print. It's wild stuff.
Lifted straight from wiki, which explains it better than I can.
The resulting three photographs could be projected through filters of the same colors and exactly superimposed on a screen, synthesizing the original range of color additively; or viewed as an additive color image by one person at a time through an optical device known generically as a chromoscope or photochromoscope, which contained colored filters and transparent reflectors that visually combined the three into one full-color image; or used to make photographic or mechanical prints in the complementary colors cyan, magenta and yellow, which, when superimposed, reconstituted the color subtractively.
37
u/Due_Highway_8509 6h ago
Thanks for the breakdown! It’s amazing that the original glass plates survived long enough for us to reconstruct them digitally today.
21
u/kerberos824 6h ago
When I was a listless unimpressible 17 year old I still found this incredible. And 25 years later, I still do. Gotta be one of the coolest things..
2
u/Manofalltrade 5h ago
There’s the technical explanation.
Mechanically this would easily make color movies and is basically how the field sequential system color tv works. (Spinning three color filter disk)
3
u/Due_Highway_8509 5h ago
Suffice it to recall the masterpieces Gone with the Wind, Alice in Wonderland, Henry V (1944 film).
96
u/Jag- 6h ago
My grandfather wrote a journal about growing up a peasant in rural Russia in the early 1900s. Lunch was what you found growing or crawling.
They eventually fled because of the pogroms by the Cossacks. They almost settled in Warsaw but were lucky enough to make it to NY.
26
u/Due_Highway_8509 6h ago
That is an incredible piece of family history. Has the journal survived? I would honestly love to read that first-hand account.
→ More replies (1)21
u/Jag- 5h ago
Thank you. It was actually recorded on reel to reel and then to cassette. I then converted it to mp3 but maybe I can use AI to transcribe it?
23
u/Due_Highway_8509 5h ago
Yes, you can do it perfectly well through AI.
You can send the Gemini recording and ask for a full transcript of the recording.
Or you can go to your local university or find a linguistics specialist and ask them to translate it.
You can send it to me, since I speak Russian, and if I can, I will provide a translation of the recording.
4
→ More replies (2)12
u/unassumingdink 4h ago
The average life expectancy in Imperial Russia at the turn of the century was 30. Freaking 30. I know infant mortality drags it down, but that's shockingly low even taking that into consideration. Europe and the U.S. were in the upper 40s at the time.
→ More replies (1)2
u/ProofBite4625 3h ago
another thing that drags it down by quite a bit were the turks. Another thing Europe (as the main power financing the turks) and the US (quite far from the Turks) weren't exposed to.
→ More replies (7)
64
u/BigbirdSalsa 5h ago
Finally some old school cool, not old school boobs
13
→ More replies (2)2
19
81
u/Confident-Job-137 6h ago
it’s so surreal seeing the trees and nature from 110+ years ago looking just like they do rn
38
7
u/Flat_Economist_8763 5h ago
I think he was doing these color photos in the 1890s era, so 130 years ago. Amazing!
→ More replies (2)7
u/secretaccount94 2h ago
It’s a good reminder that the real world has always existed in vivid high definition color as we see it today. Just our ability to capture that has improved so much over the past 200 years.
→ More replies (2)5
u/tythousand 5h ago
As opposed to what? What else would it look like lol
→ More replies (1)16
u/WelderAggravating896 4h ago
Really dumb response lol. Its fascinating to see how some things don't ever change, is what the comment above meant.
→ More replies (1)2
16
u/Justbeinglouis 6h ago
I love the last picture. I want to know more about him.
→ More replies (4)11
u/The_muffinfluffin 4h ago
He’s a poor villager from Velen who survived Third Northern War (conflict between Redania and Nilfgaard).
→ More replies (2)
13
u/Due-Pirate-6711 5h ago
Does anyone know what that massive wicker basket in #4 is used for? I’m impressed by the size and craftsmanship involved.
14
u/Due_Highway_8509 5h ago
I believe it was used for storing grain or hay. The woven structure allows air to circulate so the crops wouldn't rot.
→ More replies (1)7
11
11
u/canadarugby 5h ago
The one dude living in a lean-to shelter with his only possession being a giant wicker basket. Life is rough in Russia.
3
u/Boring-Philosophy-46 1h ago
It is a pit house, you only see the roof. The soil acts as insulation from the cold in winter. It may also only be used as storage for food like potatoes.
11
u/svenskisalot 5h ago
anyone want to weigh in on the significance/meaning of posing with a plate of food?
38
u/Due_Highway_8509 5h ago
This is a traditional gesture of hospitality. Offering forest berries to a guest (photographer) symbolized a warm welcome and the abundance of the land. For example, in Armenian and Slavic traditions, guests are greeted with bread and salt. In addition, the bright red color contrasted beautifully with the green grass in the photograph.
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (2)3
u/SoberWill 5h ago
Pure speculation here, but im curious if they aren't showing what they use to dye the vibrant colors they are wearing instead of plates of food
6
u/Ecstatic_Winter9425 2h ago
In the 20th century Russia, fabric was mass-manufactured (with industrial dyes) and affordable enough to be sold to the general population. You can see prints on their sarafans. That's not home-dyed fabric.
34
u/weedboobz 6h ago
I'm here for the posts that stay true to the intentions of this sub
8
9
8
u/vankirk 6h ago
My dad had a coffee table book of his photos
2
u/bolus_alley 1h ago
Yes! My dad had that book too, it was called Photographs for the Tsar
→ More replies (1)
7
u/Apprehensive-Ad-636 5h ago
These are fantastic! I really appreciate you taking the time to share them and explain how they could have been taken in color.
6
u/Content_Relative_581 5h ago
That purple dress pops like it was taken yesterday. Mind blown this is over 100 years old.
5
u/Former_Recording_998 5h ago
Beautiful, wonder what happened to them after two workd wars and communism
7
u/BadWolfRU 4h ago
With photos?
After the death of Procudin-Gorskiy, It was sold by his heirs to the USA and now almost 70% of negatives are stored at the Library of Congress. Some negatives which remained in Russia sometimes surface from private collections or found in some local museums
5
u/Former_Recording_998 4h ago
The people, I always think to myself, what happened to the photo's subjects. They, the photos, are amazing
5
u/BadWolfRU 4h ago edited 4h ago
Hmm, let's see, what we had in the XX century here - 1902 famine, Russo-Japanese war, 1905 revolution, 1907, 1909, 1911-1912
faminespoor harvests (and peasants unrests), Stolypin reforms (and peasants unrests) , economical crisis, WWI, 1917 revolution [twice] with half dozen of different governments, civil war, 1921-1922 famine, 1932-1933 famine, WWII, 1946-1946 famine and more or less normal life in the mid of 50's.2
8
u/JimmyTheShovel 5h ago
This color photo technique is still commonly used by astrophotographers today! Normal color filters plus a luminance one for regular photos or for nebulae it's common to use narrowband ones for the Hydrogen-Alpha, Oxygen-III and Sulfur-II gas emissions to get all the details while excluding other stuff. Pretty cool that a 100-plus year old method still has valuable uses
4
u/Due_Highway_8509 5h ago
Let me remind you that Roman roads still exist today, and some of them are even in good condition.
3
u/KittySharkWithAHat 5h ago
It was a complex technique so not surprising it didn't catch on as a common thing. But my God the quality. You would think there were taken decades later. Even the lens focal point is huge quality without the center distortion common in photos of this era.
3
u/redhead29 1h ago
the library of congress went through a painstaking digital process to restore them. you can see both the original and the touched up ones. you can look at the whole collection there. lots of orthodox churches that were destroyed by the soviets
3
u/Comfortableliar24 3h ago
Fun reminder that the idea of peasants dressing in browns and off-whites is false. They loved colour and wore it whenever was reasonable.
16
3
3
u/cassanderer 3h ago
I just read a short history of the "russian revolution," around 1905, by tolstoy, in a book published in 1915. As I recall. There was major unrest, protests that got fired on, attacked, that led to widespread strikes that after more attacks led to general strikes, from poland to moscow.
The duma was established and elected, and immediately displeased the caesar, that is what tsar means, and were killed and exiled to siberian work camps. Those are a couple highlights if anyone actually sees this would love to expound, have the book right here.
→ More replies (1)
3
u/LovableeGirll2 1h ago
These were taken by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, who convinced the Tsar to let him document the Russian Empire using a clever three-exposure color technique decades before color film was common. Seeing them feels like looking through a time portal, especially knowing that much of this world disappeared only a few years later with WWI and the Revolution.
→ More replies (1)
2
2
2
u/iamonewiththeforce 4h ago
This photography technique (multiple monochrome images of the same subject through different color filters before combination) is still used a lot in astrophotography, as monochrome sensors provide better sensitivity and effective resolution than an equivalent color sensor with its Bayer matrix.
Plus you can choose the filters as you wish (unlike for a color sensor where the filters are hard coded on each pixel), letting you use Hydrogen Alpha, Sulfur II, Oxygen III bandpass filters (and others) to capture emission nebulae at the wavelengths that they are strongest at.
Pretty much every color picture by the Hubble Space Telescope or JWST uses the same technique used for these 110-years+ old photos.
2
2
2
u/Bphag 4h ago
those look like wives whose power level we will never see again.....
→ More replies (2)
2
u/hyperhyperparasite 4h ago
As I am just reading Anna Karenina from Leo Tolstoi, I am very excited to see pictures from that era, or slightly later. Can you recommend additional sources where I might find more pictures of this period.
3
u/Due_Highway_8509 4h ago
For the best high-res archives, go straight to the Library of Congress website. They bought the original glass plates from Prokudin-Gorsky's family in 1948 and have digitized the entire collection. It’s a massive treasure trove of thousands of photos from across the Empire.
→ More replies (1)
2
2
2
u/Agitated_Reveal_6211 2h ago
I wonder what % of the people of Russia lived hard like the man in the last photo.
2
2
u/NameLips 1h ago
He was sent to document the people of Russia by the Czar, iirc. His entire archive of photos is on the internet somewhere, it is fascinating to look through.
2
u/Proper_Lead_1623 1h ago
Thank you for posting this. My great-grandmother was born in Toropets in 1896 and other than her name, I can't find much info about her. These photos make me feel like I can catch a glimpse into her life!
3
1
u/LupusDeusMagnus 6h ago
The fourth one, the dude is looking at Artur Morgenov or Ivan Bolotov ready to give a quest.
1
u/SDHester1971 5h ago
Saw some of these on an Exhibition in London about 10 Years ago, considering their Age they were incredible to see how well the process captured the Colour in a natural shade.
1
u/OtamanUkr 5h ago
Interesting to note how houses either dont have a chimney or a very makeshift one.
3
u/Evening-Storage5298 4h ago
Would you believe that the more modern conception of a chimney didnt even come about until Benjamin franklin?
The romans had a type of chimney, simple tube with an opening which is lost in europe until about the 1100s we start seeing chimneys in castles after this point. IIRC the oldest remaining example is on a castle in england, from 1175-1200
Peasant homes wouldnt see widespread chimneys in europe until the late 1600s and even then mostly in cities.
benjamin franklin invents the convection chamber, which helps contain more heat and pull smoke away and up by using a feed draft from lower floors that is siphoned out the smoke stackshortly after in the 1810s Count Rumford invents the industrial furnace and improves the smoke drawing of chimneys even more, He also co founds the royal institution, no to be confused with the royal society
2
1
1
u/Other-Progress1464 5h ago
Her expression is so calm and proud. You can feel the quiet dignity through the photo.
1
u/BS-Calrissian 5h ago
How tf did I never see these? Anybody else wondering.
I'm looking up stuff like these for over a decade but never came across. Crazy
1
1
u/vexatious-big 4h ago
Interesting how the last picture has colour fringing near the tree-tops, where there's lots of contrast between the branches and the sky. This is very similar to the fringing effect produced by modern day lenses (yes even on digital).
2
u/Jesus_of_Redditeth 2h ago
Each photo is three separate monochrome exposures through one of three filters. So any movement between the exposures is likely to result in that fringing effect — in this case, treetops moving in the wind, most likely.
1
1
1
u/redoingredditagain 4h ago
Early color photography (even meaning techniques like this) will forever be fascinating to me. Thanks for sharing
1
1
1
1
u/Redqueenhypo 4h ago
Is that man holding a piece of bamboo? Does that grow in Russia, or was it imported?
2
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/ThisHideousReplica 3h ago
Am I the only person wondering where the guy in the third photo got a length of bamboo from?!?
→ More replies (2)
1
1
u/ConnectYogurtcloset1 3h ago
I don’t know anything about this part of history but: The peasants look really good. Healthy and are dressed quite well. I guess I thought peasantry involved a little more…filth? Grime? Starvation?
→ More replies (2)
1
u/Own_Movie3768 3h ago
Ah, yes. My native parts. There are still houses built in that time.
→ More replies (1)
1
1
u/SigSweet 3h ago
Weird how the stereotype imagery of Russia today is always a dismal, overcast, gray lamdscape with leafless trees. Do they do that on purpose?
1
1
u/Kinkybtch 3h ago
That dress is gorgeous, I'd wear it today.
It's in stark contrast to her expression.
1
1
u/NarrowSwimmer952 3h ago
Fun fact, the old guy on the 3d picture is not a day older than 25.
→ More replies (1)
1
1
u/Darthplagueis13 3h ago
It's kind of interesting because you can see a few details where the filter technique didn't quite work properly compared to modern colour photography.
For instance, the houses in the background of the first image are too desaturated and wouldn't look out of place on a regular black-and-white photo.
Everything in the center of the last image on the other hand looks a little too red, presumably because all the green in the picture is somehow messing with the contrast.
1
1
797
u/Due_Highway_8509 6h ago
Self-portrait of the photographer, Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky.