The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated: The Empire That Was Russia

Created by the Library of Congress, "The Empire That Was Russia" presents a collection of unusually early color photographs of the Russian Empire's final years, taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863–1944). Using a unique process that took multiple exposures of a scene through different color filters, which were subsequently superimposed to create a color image, Prokudin-Gorskii documented everything from the churches and villages that characterized the long-established face of Russia to the railroads, factories, and other signs of the country's rising economic and industrial might. In addition, with the backing of Tsar Nicholas II, Prokudin-Gorskii traveled between 1909 and 1912, and again in 1915, to capture the dizzying diversity of Russia's population in their finest holiday dress and in their everyday lives. The digital archive is fully searchable by keyword, place, and other tags, and is browsable according to divisions into various thematic collections.