These are amazing photos here, apparently taken around 1910 you can tell they werent colourised.

enjoy

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/08/russia_in_color_a_century_ago.html

I have spotted a couple that are obviously paintings and the faces in a few appear to be painted. If part is proven a fraud, the authenticity of the rest is drawn into question.

Wow! They certainly look the business to me. Matt, which are the paintings?

The "three filters" technique to replicate colour can do strange things like make it look a bit bright, and some of them do look "painted over" as a result, but that's just an artefact of the technique. (These images are the result of somebody exposing modern film with all three of the old filters in sequence, so these aren't the actual 1910 plates.) In a few you can see mis-alignment of the plates (that odd blurred effect that looks like a 3D picture without the benefit of the magic glasses...), and in others you can see where one of the figures has moved during the course of the three exposures, blurring them.

I was wondering how the colours stayed so vivid until I read about the filters - old true-colour stock degrades chemically with time and can go "green" or "maroon" in general appearance, which these didn't.

Interesting stuff!

Tom

What part has been proven a fraud? These are well known photos and if they were fraudulent it would have been proved before now. Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky was a pioneer of colour photography. You can read more about him here and search the collection in the Library of Congress here

If Those were paintings I would very much like to go back in time and do some serious Hand Shaking.
So when originally viewed, to get the full colour effect it would have been projected? like a slide,? I did some reading on the Wiki page and its quite Amazing!

It must be due to how the photos were developed.

Hi Matt,

I understand what you mean - the "three filters" technique can look a bit odd and artificial. Colours tend to be more vibrant and less "complicated" than we're used to with modern colour film. (Like that first image of the woman against a green woodland background...)

The best part, though, is that it doesn't involve unstable chemicals for the colours, so it doesn't degrade the way more traditional colour film from say WWII has over the years. (The only way to really stop the chemical process with film stock is to freeze it, which isn't too practical, so all true-colour film will eventually degrade...)

But I can see where that seated guy in the greatcoat looks like his wrinkled face was a painting! If only I could get figures to look that good...

Tom

I enjoyed looking at those. It really shows how life in the past was just as colour full as it is today. I suppose we get so used to seeing black and white pictures, that we think life was in black and white. Thanks for the link James.

Very cool James. Thanks for sharing.

Breathtaking photos James, thanks for posting the link for us.

I've come across these a few times before. Truly amazing photographs.

In a naively sentimental way I find them actually quite sad, they look like they were taken yesterday yet this is a world thats disappeared for good.

Thanks for sharing those pics. they are truly facinating!

Gary