The empire that was Russia: the Prokudin-Gorskii photographic record re-created

Abstract

The story of the effort of the Library of Congress to preserve and make accessible color images taken by the innovative scientist-photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii begins a century ago in prerevolutionary Russia and ends with Internet access to stunning digital reproductions created by LC staffers and others. The story involves Tsar Nicholas II, the hiding of images in cellars deep below Paris during World War II, and the use of modern digital, high-resolution scanners and computer software to render more than 121 digital images in vibrant natural colors derived from Prokudin-Gorskii's glass-plate negatives. In 2000, as part of the effort to preserve the images, the Library of Congress scanned all 1,903 original glass-plate negatives at uninterpolated 1,000 pixels/inch, 16-bit grayscale mode, saving them as uncompressed TIFF format image files. Information Technology Services (ITS) staff located experts with the photography expertise and digital image technology to recover full-color digital images from these near-century-old "color-separation" negatives. Many Library divisions and two contractors collaborated on this project, which culminated in an exhibition in 2001. There is ready access to all the negatives and albums in the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/pp/pphome.html.