100+ Year Old Color Photos from Georgia

Here is a link to a collection of color photos from (I believe) 1912, taken in the Republic of Georgia. It seems that a photographer named Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky “perfected a complex early method of color photography that required three separate images of each scene to be shot, with color filters placed over the lens. When the three black-and-white photos were sandwiched together and had red, green, and blue light shone through them, a color image could be projected.”

They’re from an article at the RFERL.org website. Here’s one of the photos:

See also a few more up-to-date photos in the Georgia Gallery at EarthPhotos.com, taken on my visit in 2006.

More Vintage Moscow

The other day I shared a fascinating color photo essay at RFERL.com, from Moscow in the 1950s. It prompted me to seek out what photos I could find from my 1986 trip there. Here are three.

First, opposite the Kremlin, across Red Square, was the cavernous government-owned GUM department store (Глáвный универсáльный магазѝн), translated as “Main Universal Store:”

I stayed that trip at the massive Moscow Hotel (Гостиница Москва) just outside Red Square on Manezh Square. Here are the amenities on the desk in my room, circa summer 1986:

And here is the view from that room onto Red Square:

http://www.earthphotos.com/Countries/Russia/i-sHCjdqB/X3