Google Doodle celebrates Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky’s 155th Birthday

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sergei Mikhailovich conceived a grandiose project to capture modern Russia.

What was Russia 100 years ago? Often we see documentary footage only in black and white. Modern technology allows you to paint old photos in different colors, but the effect depends on the imagination of the masters of Photoshop. In this case, Google Doodle invites readers to celebrate the work of the pioneer of color photography in Russia, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Sergei Mikhailovich conceived a grandiose project to capture modern Russia, its culture, history, and modernization in color photographs. Prokudin-Gorsky in May 1909 received an audience with Emperor Nicholas II, who instructed him to photograph all possible aspects of life in all areas that constituted the Russian Empire at that time.

Born in Murom, Vladimir Province, Russia, on this day in 1863 a talented chemist, an enthusiastic photographer, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Institute of Technology, Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky published a number of articles devoted to the principles of color photography by 1906. During this period, he improved the new method, providing the same color sensitivity of the entire spectrum, which could already make color images suitable for projection.

At the same time, he develops his own method of transmitting a color image, based on the separation of colors into three components. He shot objects three times through three filters, red, green and blue. Three black and white positive plates were obtained.

Currently, much of the legacy of the famous photographer is stored in the Library of Congress.

He died on September 27, 1944, at the age of 81.