Close and Far: Russian Photography Now at Calvert 22 Gallery When Nicholas II, the last Tsar, commissioned an early pioneer of colour photography to document his vast empire in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution, he presided over the largest territory in the world. Romanov Russia extended from Finland to Turkestan, and from Poland to Siberia. That photographer, an aristocrat called Sergey Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky, was to travel by boat, train and horse-drawn carriage, non-stop for six years, carrying his delicate glass plates and astoundingly complex chemistry with him. From 1909 to 1915, he journeyed down the Volga, across the Urals into Siberia, south to the Caucasus and on to Turkestan and Asian Russia. Prokudin-Gorsky made pictures of places that had never previously existed, and went to regions that have never been photographed again. All were captured in colour, in a startling burst of luminosity before the world disappeared back into black and white. e-flux/announcements/close-and-far-russian-photography-now/
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 15:37:17 +0000
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