Johnson's Russia List
#5459
25 September 2001
[log in to unmask]
#14
The Independent (UK)
25 September 2001
What's the Russian for `say cheese'? `Most extraordinary is that when these
photographs were taken, Chekhov and Tolstoy were still alive'
BY MILES KINGTON
YESTERDAY I WAS enthusing about a website installed by the Library of
Congress to bring us pictures from an exhibition of theirs. It's a show of
colour photos taken 100 years ago by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-
Gorskii, who, at the Tsar's behest, went around Russia getting his vast
realm on film. He photographed ethnic tribesmen, farm workers, steam
engines, tea pickers, enormous churches and tiny families, all in glowing
colour - and you can see these amazing pictures for yourself by clicking on
to www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire. Everyone I have mentioned it to has reacted
with wonder to what they have seen, so I think I ought to pass it on you too.
I find it strangely restful bringing these pictures up on my screen,
partly, I suppose, because nothing ever seems to be moving in them, and
that again is because in 1900 photographers still had to deal with a long
exposure and make sure that nothing moved while the shutter was open.
It was worse for Prokudin-Gorskii, however. He had to take each photograph
three times in quick succession. This was because the colour process he had
devised involved photographing a scene with a red filter, then a blue
filter, then a green filter. By amalgamating all three shots he could then
produce a colour print or, if he was projecting them as slides, produce the
colour by projecting them through those three different filters
simultaneously.
I don't know how it works. I am just telling you what the Library of
Congress tells us. But I do know that these frozen moments from long ago
are absolutely ravishing, and as real as looking out of your window today.
In the Transportation section, for example, there is a shot of six people
on a handcar on the Murmansk railway, two in front, four behind. One of the
men in front is Prokudin-Gorskii himself, looking modestly modern like a
country gent in a small moustache, hat and tweed suit. The man beside him
is an officer of some kind, wearing a blinding white jacket like a steward
on a cruise liner, holding on to what must be the brake handle. The others
behind are presumably railway workers because they are standing, not
sitting, and dressed quite ungrandly in what looks like their vests. At
first you think the hand car is being driven towards you, but then you see
that the flag on the handcar is hanging limply without a flutter and that
everyone and everything is motionless.
The railway is single track and must have been laid very recently, as the
line is still a white scar across the landscape, with freshly made rocks on
either side. The sky is bright blue, as in many of these pictures, which
suggests either that the weather was much better before the Communists took
over, or that Prokudin-Gorskii needed lots of light, and didn't like clouds
moving much. However, there they are, staring at us from 1915, as in other
pictures are a man selling melons, prisoners peering through bars, a hugely
fat emir from Bokhara and a family portrait comprising members of three
generations standing side by side, the grandfather clad in ancient Russian
costume, the grand-daughter already Westernised and Edwardianised.
You get a real feeling of change from the scope of the pictures. Some of
the wonderful domed churches, looking as if they are kept aloft by
balloons, cannot have changed for hundred of years; yet there are also
huge, brand-new railway bridges and factory interiors with thumping great
turbines. The views of towns look comparatively modern until you realise
there is not a single automotive vehicle to be seen in the streets.
But what is most extraordinary is that when many of these photographs were
taken, Chekhov was still alive, and so was Balakirev, and so was Tolstoy -
indeed, apparently Prokudin-Gorskii took the only known colour photo of
Tolstoy when he went to visit him. When you think of those names, it is all
part of history; when you look at these photographs, you feel you can step
through the frame and shake hands with living people, whether it's the
Turkman sprawling on the ground with his camel, the tea pickers
straightening their backs for a moment from their toil, even Prokudin-
Gorskii himself snapped sitting at a camp site ...
I don't suppose I'll ever recommend a website again. And this one is of no
practical use to anyone. But I think anyone who goes there for a glimpse
will stay, fascinated, until closing time.
*******
|