1902-12 Russian Color Photos

[Susurrus]

http://imgur.com/a/cxMZT#0

Cool.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Wow... that was pretty unbelievable. Amazing pictures.

[Sinister Intents]

They're really cool :) but they loook like theyre reenactments of an image

[TheGodlessUtopian]

I love when things like this happen because it reminds everyone that the events in the past didn't happen in obscure black and white pictures, that what occurred was just as real as it does today.

[CommieCoss]

Wow those are pretty awesome.. I gotta wonder how they are able to restore them so vividly

[Trap Queen Voxxy]

Whoever did this colorization is amazing. Nice find comrade!


I love when things like this happen because it reminds everyone that the events in the past didn't happen in obscure black and white pictures, that what occurred was just as real as it does today.

I still love B&W photos though and generally prefer them over color. I even shut off the color on my phone cam too, just find it more expressive but these are really fucking cool.

[Red Commissar]

Whoever did this colorization is amazing. Nice find comrade!



I still love B&W photos though and generally prefer them over color. I even shut off the color on my phone cam too, just find it more expressive but these are really fucking cool.

These are how the pictures originally were, not touched up or post processed later on. In fact these have been known for awhile now, see them all over the internet. The OP's imgur gallery gives a rundown of the photographer of these and how he was able to achieve color photographs in that time period:



With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images. The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time - when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948. ( Via http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html )

They are an interesting step back in time; the thing that interests me more is how clear these photos are. Even many normal, contemporary B&W pictures didn't have this level of quality, but we also have to keep in mind the more time consuming method the photographer used. Apparently the photographer's original stocks were obtained by the US at some point, but were virtually forgotten until the 1980s, and it wasn't until 1990s when they were brought back and digitized.

[Psy]

Wow those are pretty awesome.. I gotta wonder how they are able to restore them so vividly
From the web sight.

With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images.

Though color film did exist in the 1930's.
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Tokyo 1935, I have not ran across an earlier color film of a city.