Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky

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Lore & Background

Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky was born in the ancestral estate of Funikova Gora, in the Pokrovsky Uyezd of the Vladimir Governorate (now Kirzhachsky District, Vladimir Oblast). His parents were of the Russian nobility, and the family had a long military history. They moved to Saint Petersburg, where Prokudin-Gorsky enrolled in Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology to study chemistry under Dmitri Mendeleev. He also studied music and painting at the Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1890, he married Anna Aleksandrovna Lavrova, and later the couple had two sons, Mikhail and Dmitri, and a daughter, Ekaterina. Anna was the daughter of the Russian industrialist Aleksandr Stepanovich Lavrov, an active member in the Imperial Russian Technical Society (IRTS). Prokudin-Gorsky subsequently became the director of the executive board of Lavrov's metal works near Saint Petersburg and remained so until the October Revolution. He also joined Russia's oldest photographic society, the photography section of the IRTS, presenting papers and lecturing on the science of photography. In 1901, he established a photographic studio and laboratory in Saint Petersburg. The following year, he travelled to Berlin and spent 6 weeks studying colour sensitization and three-colour photography with photochemistry professor Adolf Miethe, the most advanced practitioner in Germany at that time. Throughout the years, his photographic work, publications and slide shows earned him praise, and in 1906 he was elected the president of the IRTS photography section and editor of Russia's main photography journal, the Fotograf-Liubitel. Gorsky was a member of the Royal Photographic Society between 1920 and 1932. Perhaps his best-known work during his lifetime was his color portrait of Leo Tolstoy, which was reproduced in various publications, on postcards, and as larger prints for framing. The fame from this photo and his earlier photos of Russia's nature and monuments earned him invitations to show his work to the Russian Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich and Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna in 1908, and to Tsar Nicholas II and his family in 1909. The Tsar enjoyed the demonstration, and, with his blessing, Prokudin-Gorsky got the permission and funding to document Russia in color. In the course of ten years, he was to make a collection of 10,000 photos. He considered the project his life's work and continued his photographic journeys through Russia until after the October Revolution. Under the new regime he was forced to accept a professorship and in August 1918 was ordered by the Education Ministry to procure projection equipment in Norway. He still pursued scientific work in color photography, published papers in English photography journals and, together with his colleague S. O. Maksimovich, obtained patents in Germany, England, France and Italy. In 1920, Prokudin-Gorsky remarried and had a daughter with his assistant Maria Fedorovna née Schedrina. The family finally settled in Paris in 1922, reuniting with his first wife and children. He set up a photo studio there together with his three adult children, naming it after his fourth child, Elka. In the 1930s, the elderly Prokudin-Gorsky continued with lectures showing his photographs of Russia to young Russians in France, but stopped commercial work and left the studio to his children, who named it Gorsky Frères. He died in Paris on September 27, 1944, a month after the Liberation of Paris. He is buried in the Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery.

Reader's Guide

Prokudin-Gorsky's significance lies in his pioneering application of the three-color photography principle, first suggested by James Clerk Maxwell in 1855 and demonstrated in 1861, to create a substantial and enduring record of the Russian Empire. His method involved taking three black-and-white photographs through red, green, and blue filters, which could then be projected through filters of the same colors and exactly superimposed on a screen, synthesizing the original range of color additively; or viewed through an optical device known as a chromoscope or photochromoscope; or used to make prints in the complementary colors cyan, magenta and yellow. While earlier practitioners such as Louis Ducos du Hauron (late 1860s), Edward Bierstadt (first successful three-color prints in the US in 1877), Frederic E. Ives (whose 'Kromskop' system was commercially available from 1897 until about 1907), and Adolf Miethe (with whom Prokudin-Gorsky studied in 1902) had worked with the three-color principle, Prokudin-Gorsky's project was unique in its scale and ambition: with the blessing and funding of Tsar Nicholas II, he traveled the Russian Empire from around 1909 to 1915, using a railway-car darkroom to produce thousands of images. After his death, the majority of his negatives ended up in the US Library of Congress. Starting in 2000, the negatives were digitised and the colour triples for each subject digitally combined to produce hundreds of high-quality colour images of Russia and its neighbours from over a century ago. This collection provides an invaluable visual record of a world that was soon transformed by war and revolution, and it continues to be a resource for historians, photographers, and the public.

Did You Know?

• Prokudin-Gorsky studied chemistry under Dmitri Mendeleev at the Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology.
• He spent 6 weeks in Berlin in 1902 studying colour sensitization and three-colour photography with photochemistry professor Adolf Miethe.
• His color portrait of Leo Tolstoy was his best-known work during his lifetime, reproduced on postcards and as larger prints for framing.
• He was a member of the Royal Photographic Society between 1920 and 1932.
• After his death, the majority of his negatives ended up in the US Library of Congress, and starting in 2000 they were digitised to produce hundreds of high-quality colour images.