The color photos of the Russian Empire reveal a world lost in history.

At the beginning of the 20th century, two things changed Russia and the world forever: World War I and Bolshevik Revolution. Photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin Gorschi captured the Russian way of life before Russia changed from a huge but isolated agricultural society to an increasingly industrialized society. At the beginning of the 20th century, Prokudin Gorschi worked out a plan for photographic investigation of the Russian Empire, which was supported by Tsar Nicholas II. From 1909 to 19 15, Prokudin Gorschi crossed the Russian Empire by train and took 1 1 photos of different regions. His 150 photos are now on display in Zadkin Museum to commemorate the 150 birthday of Prudin Gorschi. As a chemist, Prokudin Gorschi studied with famous color photographers in St. Petersburg, Berlin and Paris. Through his creative tinkering, he created a new way to make vibrant color slides. Prokudin Gorskii exposed a rectangular glass plate three times in a row through three different color filters (red, green and blue) to create a color image. Then, he showed three different color images in the slide and projected them onto three different lenses, one on the other. When these three images are combined into one, you can see a full-color image. Using this new method, Prokudin Gorskii photographed more than 2,000 images of the empire, from people to buildings to the expanding industrial infrastructure of the empire.

These photos truly represent a lost world: many buildings photographed by Prokudin Gorschi were destroyed in the Bolshevik Revolution. These photos also show the extensive ethnic diversity of the Russian Empire, from photos of young Russian farm girls to a series of photos of Uzbek men and women.

The complete works of Prokudin Gorschi were purchased by the Library of Congress from his son in 1948. You can visit the website of the Library of Congress.

Read more about his works on the Internet. Paris Exhibition will be held on May, 2065 18. Admission to the main museum is free, but the exhibition itself costs 4 euros (about 5.5 dollars). The slide above shows the photos on display in the exhibition and those selected from the digital collection of the Library of Congress.

"Sailing in Los Angeles. "Zadkin Museum, 100, bisrue d' assas, 75006. +33(0) 1 55 42 77 20.