Using emerging technological advances in color photography, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) made numerous photographic trips to systematically document the Russian Empire. He conducted most of his visual surveys between 1909 and 1915, although some of his work dates as early as 1905. The Empire at this time stretched 7,000 miles from west to east and 3,000 miles from north to south and comprised one-sixth of the earth’s land mass. It was the largest empire in history and spanned what today are eleven different times zones.
Tsar Nicholas II supported this ambitious project by providing passes and transportation: by rail, boat and automobile. Take a look:
Family at harvest time
General view of the factory, Kovzha
Novaia Ladoga
Woodcutters on the Svir River
Russian children sitting on the side of a hill in the countryside near White Lake
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