Russia in color, a century ago

http://archive.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/comments_russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html

by Xcelerate • 14 years ago

469 187 14 years ago

archive.boston.com

Adlai• 14 years ago

Surprisingly good quality, considering his method. You get the best sense of his method when it goes a bit wrong, in photo 27: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_c...

My favorite picture is #15, the cathedral: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_c...

daeken5• 14 years ago

What's most interesting to me, personally, is the water in these photos. Because the water is constantly moving, capturing the filtered images repeatedly won't work -- you end up capturing different images for RGB. That's what gives you that really neat rainbow effect; it looks like oil in a rainpuddle.

Edit: You can see some of this in photo 18 where the stems of the flowers were presumably moving very slightly: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_c...

Edit #2: I just realized that I've used the same exact "effect" in demo code. I had a function in a shader that would generate a pixel color given a time value; I ran it three times for each pixel with a slightly different time value and then grabbed an R/G/B from each of them. You ended up with the same exact rainbow effect that was subtle when motion was limited and extreme when high speed motion was occurring. Not that that adds a ton to this thread, but I got a kick out of it.

vhf2• 14 years ago

>Because the water is constantly moving, capturing the filtered images repeatedly won't work -- you end up capturing different images for RGB.

You're right, of course. But don't forget that the shutter speed was very low on these images. It would have harmed if the shutter speed was high : short exposure time of quickly moving water would have given very different water images for RGB. When exposing longer, motion blur makes the water seem to flow, becoming soft and blurry.

Xcelerate2• 14 years ago

What amazes me the most is how good the quality is. These photos are better than those from my smartphone, and they're over a century old!

I do wonder how well he was able to view his own photos.

One thing that struck me was how much "nature" there is. The cities seems quite a bit smaller and more contained than they do today.

artursapek3• 14 years ago

I'm sure he was able to view them well using a projector. Displays like that were the initial purpose of photography like this. Positives of these would have overlapped to make up the same images you see here.

By the way, I think it's sort of a shame to even compare smartphone digital photos to film photography. Of course they look better.

derleth2• 14 years ago

> Of course they look better.

Why?

daeken5• 14 years ago

Do you happen to have any insight into the processing of the film? I'm very curious as to how you'd process the plates into the specific colors needed for this to get anything close to life-like representations. I imagine these representations of the photos were taken from the raw negatives.

mgkimsal3• 14 years ago

No one is smiling. Not even the kids. Maybe the woman in #20 is, who knows? I know in general 'old time' photos didn't have people smiling much - very posed pictures and stoic expressions. I wonder if they had any idea how much this would color our impression of them 100+ years later?

daeken5• 14 years ago

It's very difficult to hold a smile very, very precisely. Any movement would've meant the colors would smudge. Not necessarily the reason why they're not smiling, but it's a possibility, I believe.

mgkimsal3• 14 years ago

Agreed, but holding any pose is a challenge - kids sitting on the hill - they'd fidget and move. The water moves. The sun moves if you wait long enough. I wonder how many 'bad' photos there are from the early days of photos where people tried smiling and they had smudged faces.

bradddd• 14 years ago

That's exactly it. The exposures were much longer then than now. It's also the same reason the bodies of water have the rainbow effect on their surfaces.

mladenkovacevic2• 14 years ago

I think smiling for a photograph must be some sort of social training that humans either take to or don't.

I, for example, still find it very difficult and unnatural to smile for photographs unless I am already smiling about something else and the picture is just a candid moment caught at that time.

I would imagine that this old picture taking process (3 separate pictures with different filters each time) took quite a bit of time and subjects had to be posed for a a longer period of time. It would be very difficult to hold a smile for that long, and especially in those early photography days when the smiling-for-pictures convention still hasn't been established.

acomar• 14 years ago

Some of the pictures would have been impossible if the camera wasn't automatically swapping the filters very quickly. You can actually see the distortion is things moved around in the images and the colors separated, and there's even a sense of how fast they were moving. It seems to me that the pictures were taken in rapid succession indeed.

robbiep4• 14 years ago

reminds me of the story (not sure if it is true or not) of how the telephone revolutionised the world - prior to that, you had to be introduced to someone by a third party before you could speak to them; subsequent to the telephone the word 'hello' was invented. Or so the story goes

malsme• 14 years ago

It is probably a strange thing to say (i.e. common knowledge for others), but it only recently occurred to me that people develop a standard pose for photos. If you look at a family album or say Facebook or Flickr, and scroll through historic photos, the most "photogenic" people look almost identical. Those people will face in a certain direction with the same shape of smile and posture, it's almost freaky how identical they are! So it's obviously a practised/fake thing, that some learn to do while others remain oblivious. Back then, this concept would not have existed.

mcpie• 14 years ago

It's not so much social training as it is the exposure time (which you also mentioned). Exposure time was so long that it was nearly impossible to smile in pictures. See for example the picture of the photographer himself at the stream - the running water in the river is a blur. I'm surprised the exposure time isn't that high in these pictures though. The shot of the workmen in the woodshop is distinctly modern by showing 'action'.

rjurney3• 14 years ago

Russians don't walk around smiling, unless something good happens to smile about. In fact, smiling Americans look stupid grinning all the time.

georgemcbay2• 14 years ago

As an American, the only time I see Americans grinning all the time is in stock photos. IRL we don't sit around eating salad and laughing all day.

Tomek_• 14 years ago

Americans don't walk around being sad, unless something bad happens to be sad about. In fact, sad Russians look stupid wearing sad-face all the time.

thematt2• 14 years ago

I'm not familiar enough with Russia specifically, but isn't smiling in photographs viewed as a weakness in some cultures?

ollysb3• 14 years ago

The amount of smiling varies a lot between cultures, you can't correlate smiling with levels of happiness. Russians are known for not being big on smiling http://blog.properrussian.com/2011/05/why-russians-are-not-s.... From that article:

>> There is a popular Russian saying, “A laughter without a reason is a sign of stupidity”

felipemnoa• 14 years ago

There is a huge difference between smiling and laughing. Yeah, laughing out loud with no reason will seem stupid to anybody.

mgkimsal3• 14 years ago

There is a popular Russian saying, “A laughter without a reason is a sign of stupidity”

I'd read this, and spent a couple weeks in Russia last fall, and noticed the lack of smiling a lot when I was there. The thing that struck me about that mindset, and particularly that phrase (and others like it) is that it presumes the person looking at me knows if I have a reason to smile/laugh or not.

There's no doubt a lot of layers in the thinking that produced that (and similar) phrases which I can't unravel or fathom, but it's still strange all the same. To presume someone is stupid if you see them laughing is certain a cultural thing. Here (US) we'd probably just assume they were happy.

zachrose• 14 years ago

This is probably not to do with photography but portraiture in general. Think about all the drawn and painted portraits you've ever seen.

prebrov• 14 years ago

Tolstoy's and Dostoyevsky's legacy lies heavy on our minds as well as perpetual hangover and bone ache from dancing with bears. ;)

duck• 14 years ago

You might find this interesting: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2375633

elteto• 14 years ago

I read somewhere that getting a photograph in those times was considered of great importance. The closest that you had back then to something like this was commissioning an artist to draw a portrait of yourself, very expensive and out of reach for common people. These are pictures mostly of rural folks, and even the ones with some kind of position like the emir were probably very poor. Therefore when somebody comes along and wants to take your photograph, you put on your best clothes, sit in a dignified pose and take it seriously, because it is a big deal.

gigantor• 14 years ago

Photos required a very long exposure back then and a smile is hard to keep for what amounted to minutes. Keeping a neutral expression minimized movement and consequently blur resulting in an expensive re-shoot.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2011/1118/Louis...

xbryanx• 14 years ago

And then, there's always some folks who like to deviate from the norm:

http://www.retronaut.co/2010/06/smiling-victorians/

I dare ya to scowl at these cheshires.

1gor• 14 years ago

> No one is smiling

Don't forget, this was an official photographer mission, sponsored by the Tzar.

I think most people on the photos were stressed enough to be asked to pose in front of unknown equipment, probably with some local officials present on the shoot.

EDIT: actually, there are nice smiling faces on http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_c... , where people are not posing.

onetimeuse001• 14 years ago

Normally people are not smiling unless they are meeting someone or seeing something funny.

firebones• 14 years ago

At least one reason that smiling didn't persist for people of a certain time was that dental care wasn't the greatest, and people were reluctant to be captured with their poor teeth showing. Having had the opportunity to sort through thousands of studio photographs spanning most of the 20th century, I could almost date the age of the subject independent of the time the photograph was taken by seeing whether they were smiling or not.

bluekeybox• 14 years ago

Two reasons:

1. Smiling for a camera is something you do because you want to be remembered that way (happy) -- it is like positive propaganda of yourself via media. Now, figuring out a way to spread a positive image of yourself via the photographic medium is actually a culturally sophisticated trick that we learn by imitating a social habit -- but someone sometime had to invent that habit first. What you are looking at are photos of people taken before that trick was invented (and even if the trick was already invented, the people portrayed wouldn't know about it because they likely had never seen a photo in their life).

2. Even if people knew that they will be remembered more positively if they smile, it took about three minutes to take the kind of photos Prokudin took, and they had to hold absolutely still. It is hard to hold a grin on your face for three minutes without changing it and thus ruining your portrait.

eps• 14 years ago

Not just on Russian photographs. Dig up your grand-grand-parent photos and have a look - same expressions. It probably stems from the need to pose for photographs in daguerreotype times, back when they sat you in a chair and hold your head with a clamp, all because of an insanely long exposure that was required. Do that for 20-30 years and a somber expression on the photograms becomes a social norm, even if the technology moves forward.

rehack• 14 years ago

In #22 you can see some people smiling. The one with the hat is certainly smiling.

twelvechairs• 14 years ago

Note that those shown are all heavily restored (also cropped) versions of the originals. They are all from the Library of Congress collection (~1900 of the ~3500 he made). An example of an unrestored version for comparison is at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/prok/item/prk20000025....

dkroy• 14 years ago

Honestly, even those in the link are impressive to me. Just think of where technology was at that point in time, and what ingenuity it took to create pictures of this quality.

vhf2• 14 years ago

I wouldn't call it "technology". It's more of a successful experiment than technology, to me.

Color separation cameras came two decades after, and this was really a technology : making one camera capture at the same time 3 pictures on negative. (Where those very impressive pictures shown in the link are taken using the color separation process but without a color separation camera, and not on negative.)

jsilence• 14 years ago

Yes. I'm also really impressed with the pictures. We have come a lone way in only three to four generations. My personal contribution to humanity so far: zero. Standing on the shoulders of giants...

bane• 14 years ago

Anybody know an easy place to download the entire batch? The LoC page makes getting them in bulk a bit of a pain.

bpatrianakos2• 14 years ago

I think a bash script and wget will be your best bet there. I looked too and couldn't find a way. If I end up getting some shell script working I'll post it here for you.

gnosis• 14 years ago

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

markiel• 14 years ago

This had been in the "news" for the past 5 years if not longer. How many times can it makes the frontage? ;)

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/

sukuriant3• 14 years ago

As many times as we're happy to recall the impressive technical feat of the original artist, or as long as we're fascinated by what life looked like a hundred years ago. The max of those two.

JshWright• 14 years ago

I've probably seen this set of images half a dozen times. I still find myself scrolling through the whole set every time it pops up. It's really a stunning set of images, and absolutely worth enjoying more than once.

bcl• 14 years ago

Previously seen 749 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1621517

Xcelerate2• 14 years ago

Huh, interesting. Well, there's a lot of new people here since 749 days ago (including me) so I suppose it can't hurt to see it again!

wtn• 14 years ago

These photos were first posted online about ten years ago.

alecperkins• 14 years ago

I was first amazed at the quality, then surprised that these were taken more recently than I expected, in 1910. Then, I realized that, duh, that was 102 years ago. It's strange how even 100+ years ago is getting more and more recent. (Obviously, that's how it works. But perception lags quite a bit.)

cek• 14 years ago

> It's strange how even 100+ years ago is getting more and more recent.

I think you are absolutely right with this. As the rate of change increases (and it has been rapidly increasing for the last 150 years) it makes sense that history would compress too. Fascinating!

olavk• 14 years ago

I don't think the rate of change increases. In just a few years after these pictures Russia will be involved in WWI, then revolution and civil war. After than Stalin, then WWII. Millions and millions of people will have their lives changed and shattered by these enormous changes.

Sure, today we get a new cell phone model each year, but I don't think this kind of change is as bag as e.g. revolution and world war.

dusing• 14 years ago

I used to always think the 80's were 20 years ago.

diziet• 14 years ago

Strangely enough most of the photos now would not be considered those of Russia, but would be other distinct countries.

azernik2• 14 years ago

Yup - the series is titled "Travels in the Russian Empire", and it really was a multinational empire back then.

photorized2• 14 years ago

Looking at these feels like time travel.

derekp7• 14 years ago

It's funny, I got the exact same impression. Normally when you think of the past, you think of black & white, or faded color. But if you took a ride in a time machine, of course the past would look as vibrant as anything you currently see. As a side note, I've noticed that when TV programs show a film clip from 30 years ago (say the early 80's), such as old sporting event clips, they add a false color fade to make the clip look old -- even though most of the film clips (and any non-film based storage) from that time would not have suffered such degradation.

photorized2• 14 years ago

Exactly. These don't look "old", there is no retro feel to them, especially with the landscapes. Messes with your head.

keiferski2• 14 years ago

Just think: in 50-100 years, the phrase "100 years ago" won't mean that much, in terms of technology.

thematt2• 14 years ago

Really? Why do you suppose? In 50-100 years, I can easily see us having a permanent presence on another planet, fully automated vehicles and a Terminator like military comprised completely of robots. That world (if true), technologically, would look amazingly different than how we live today.

keiferski2• 14 years ago

Okay, maybe a better word choice would have been "certain" technologies. Seeing photographs of the 50s in 2050 won't seem all that amazing.

michaelkscott• 14 years ago

Another planet in our solar system? Sure. But even the nearest planet beyond our Solar system is about 11 light years away. And getting there anytime soon is an unfeasible goal according to Physics. Perhaps the Earth would be different 50 to 100 from now, but I wouldn't bet too much on any exciting activity going on outside of our planet.

jl6• 14 years ago

Sci-fi has trained us to expect all the things you mention so when they arrive we probably won't feel that anything much has changed.

jader201• 14 years ago

Really? I think it will mean more than it does now. The pace at which technology advances seems to be increasing exponentially, at least that's my perception.

I can't imagine what will change even in the next 10 years, let alone the next 50-100 years.

leak• 14 years ago

Looking at their faces, no one seems happy. Not a single smile in any photo including those of kids. Kinda depressing.

vsviridov• 14 years ago

Well, they have to maintain their pose and expression for 3 consecutive shots.

If you look at old daguerreotypes people have really weird expressions in them as well, because they had to be still for long time.

verelo• 14 years ago

This makes me realized how amazing it will be having tools like Instagram, having captured millions of photos, in around 100 years from now.

georgemcbay2• 14 years ago

I have mixed feelings about that.

Millions of recent GPS tagged photographs floating around in the cloud have some incredibly cool technical potential when combined with something like PhotoSynth, but culturally I think ubiquitous photos actually weaken the historical impact.

To loosely stick with the Russian theme, a peek into a single moment in the life one person 100 years ago is fascinating, but a million peeks into a single moment in the life of a million people 100 years ago is just data.

sonnenkiste2• 14 years ago

Will all these Instagram pictures be there in 100 years? What happens if Instagram shuts down?

ollysb3• 14 years ago

I've always found it interesting that people's perception of history is coloured(couldn't resist) by having only seen it in black and white. You almost have to remember that the world wasn't actually in black and white 100 years ago. It's fascinating to see photos from that far back in colour, it somehow makes it easier to empathise with the people in the shots.

akkartik• 14 years ago

http://www.freewebs.com/calvin-hobbes-org/dadbandwandcolour....

Makes the world back then seem more modern, forces me to take it more seriously. The past is a different place, not stupider or more primitive, just different.

bergie• 14 years ago

Another good one is seeing ancient Greek and Roman statues in the colors they had and not just dull, white marble

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/multimedia/photos/?device=andr...

diggan2• 14 years ago

These statues are painted afterwards and is probably not the "true" colors.

keyle• 14 years ago

I did see that, in 2010. And the title misslead me to think of something new. Could we please tag titles appropriately? ie. (2010)

ilamont• 14 years ago

I love the fact that these photos capture a landscape without cars. It is especially striking in the shots of cities. Imagine what it would look like if a photo of the same locations were taken now -- more pavement and cars, fewer trees.

kbolino• 14 years ago

Actually, you might be surprised about the tree part. Take a look at Tbilisi then and now, and you'll see more trees now.

jackflintermann• 14 years ago

CS129 (Computational Photography) at Brown actually has students reconstruct these same photos as its first assignment. It's not too hard, and a good introduction to image alignment. Check out the assignment at http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs129/asgn/proj1/

derrida• 14 years ago

I notice they have a picture of Tblisi (http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bi...) , which is now in Georgia (not Russia). Tblisi is a rather beautiful looking place, here is a recent picture from almost the same place http://www.experience.hk/wp-content/uploads/Tbilisi-4.jpg

jdabney• 14 years ago

It is amazing how many trees have grown back.

tangus• 14 years ago

I don't think they grew back; they are probably the result of modern irrigation.

shawnc3• 14 years ago

These are so amazing. The world wasn't sepia toned a hundred years ago! As silly as that statement is, my brain is actually having a hard time really believing these photos are from 100 years ago. I'm in awe.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 14 years ago

So goes the joke:

  "Dad, why are there only black-and-white photos from before the early 1900s?"

  "Because you see, son, the world actually was black-and-white back then."

  "Then why were there colour portraits?"

  "Because you see, son, artists were insane."

lysol• 14 years ago

^ Calvin and Hobbes

diggan2• 14 years ago

Original, slightly longer: http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/calvin-father-on-bla...

agumonkey2• 14 years ago

I saw a hi-res version of this film two days ago http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeF4HXCq5z0. It was almost anachronical. Low res. jittery black and white movies makes everything look obsolete.

shawnc3• 14 years ago

Thanks for the link!!! That too, is awesome.

001sky24• 14 years ago

these photos are from 100 years ago.

This is the work of 21st century photoshop.[1,2,3]

_____________

Notes:

[1] "Each photograph takes days of painstaking Photoshop work, adjusting the color levels, removing the blemishes, adding contrast, etc."

[2] A psd has 3 RGB monochrome channels, that are blended together to create a full colour image. The analogues of which were created here using RGB filters to create meta-images on glass plate. Digitized, they become colour separations. The "contemporary look" is a result of the final post-processing.

[3] http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs129/asgn/proj1/

shawnc3• 14 years ago

It's not 'just' the work of Photoshop tho. There is a link to ones closer to the original in this discussion thread, and those are still extremely impressive.

All in all, I stand by my statement. These are accurate depictions of the color at that time, and as ludicrous as it seems - my brain is blown away that there was so much color. I know obviously there was - but years and years of my visual representation of that time period tries to tell me differently.

bpatrianakos2• 14 years ago

Same here except one thing is the same for me: the feeling of the photos or the "vibe" if you will. Because I've seen so many black and white or sepia photos of the past I have this weird image in my head that everything back before color photos was dark and dreary and even people living in that time, in color, saw everything as washed out and bleak. After seeing these in color, "true" color (as in not added after the fact), one thing stays the same. If you pay attention you'll notice that every shot with people in it feels dreary. No one is smiling. Everyone has the same almost depressed, somewhat emotionless expression on their faces. So while I have a hard time dealing with the fact that the world was in color back then the one thing I don't have to reconcile with my preconceived notions of the past is how gloomy the people all seem. I wonder why everyone in old photos states blankly like that. Is it because they're genuinely living a hard life? Could it be that smiling for photos wasn't customary back then? Both?

Also, photos from the 60's through the early 80's also seem to have a unique feel to them. I live in Chicago where some of the buildings have been around since just after the Chicago Fire and to see pictures taken of such places through the 20th century is so strange. I know intellectually that people saw the area in full color like I see it today but somehow older photos of the same streets and places I walk by feel like they're just not the same place. In an old photo a certain building or park will seem, well, old yet when I walk by it, it seems modern as ever even though the place hasnt physically changed much if it all since the early 1900's.

It's weird and I'm glad to know other people have that same sort of relation to older photos. I don't even quite know how to describe it but I did the best I could here.

torstein• 14 years ago

The cameras of the time required longer exposure times, so peoples expressions are (most often) natural. (Try genuinly smiling for a minute.)

lisnake• 14 years ago

I come from the place where majority of these photos were taken (Ural mountains). Here is comparisons of landscapes on these old photos with current view — http://ufa.livejournal.com/2259613.html http://ufa.livejournal.com/2248707.html http://ufa.livejournal.com/2248073.html Actually, in my opinion, not much have changed

capkutay• 14 years ago

The locations of these photos are pretty significant to the etymologies of many groups of people, spanning from modern day Turks, Koreans, Japanese, and even Native Americans.

(at least some people have proposed this). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages

guard-of-terra• 14 years ago

Can you be more clear? Because I see a lot of photos from caucasus, urals, middle east and not much Siberia.

sonnenkiste2• 14 years ago

How can I vote a news down? Because this isn't "news". I've seen it two years ago. Really great pictures, but no news ...

corford• 14 years ago

If you enjoyed those and don't know who Albert Kahn is, you should also check out:

http://www.albertkahn.co.uk/photos.html

http://www.albertkahn.co.uk/about.html

There's a small museum in Paris dedicated to his work (situated on the grounds of Kahn's old estate no less) which is a wonderful experience if you're ever in Paris and looking for something cultural to do that's a bit off the beaten track. It's on the end of the metro line and is an oasis of calm compared to the typical Louvre pandemonium :)

Edit: found the link to the museum: http://albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.net/english/

intenex• 14 years ago

So, apparently smiling in pictures is a relatively new trend?

zwischenzug• 14 years ago

I don't know if this was the case here, but in other pictures of the time people didn't smile so much in photos as the slow shutter speed meant they were more likely to blur, as a smile is harder to maintain than a neutral expression.

combataircraft• 14 years ago

This is not Russia!

johnohara• 14 years ago

Picture #30: Clicking the Google Map link shows three bridges that cross the river today. The center bridge appears to be the one from the photograph.

Those stone piers are beautiful and my guess, still fully functional 100 years later.

aritraghosh007• 14 years ago

Wonderful !

Wonder how many of these historical remains are still present in Russia? Would love to visit the country once.

kghose• 14 years ago

Can any one post a link to the equipment details - design/description, anything? Thanks.

azernik2• 14 years ago

One question - was the artist himself capable of reassembling the monochrome frames into a color picture, or did he just take the pictures and stick them in an archive until someone could develop them properly?

EDIT: Answered my own question - apparently, the slides were originally intended to be projected together (with differently-colored lights) onto a wall, as color prints were too expensive.

ekianjo• 14 years ago

Old - this was already linked on HN a while ago I believe. But if you haven't seen it, it's nice.

Russia in color, a century ago

Related Stories