Page 56 - Expanded Photography
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Expanded Photography Bob Cotton 56/146
Sergei Mikhailovitch Prokudin-Gorsky: Colour photo-documentary of the Russian Empire 1909.
Between 1909 and 1912, and again in 1915, Prokudin-Gorsky photographed a wide range of sub- jects over eleven regions of Russia - then as now stretching from the Baltic to the Pacific, and the Arctic Ocean to the central Asian steppes - travelling and working in a specially equipped railway car, provided by the Czar. Prokudin-Gorsky devised his own colour photography system - some- what akin to Lumiere’s Autochrome, and productivised in the UK as the Sanger-Shepherd Process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Prokudin-Gorsky
Maybe it was the optimistic vision of the new 20th century progressing along the lines of the Belle Epoque, perhaps it was the dawning realisation that time is fleeting, and that photography is the seemingly God-given tool for attempting to preserve elements of reality, perhaps it was the influ- ence of Bergson, Nietzche and other major philosophers of the time - whatever the reason, we have several examples of photographers attempting to make collections (archives) recording the multifarious peoples of this time. Prokudin-Gorsky’s vast photo-essay of Autochrome-style colour images on the peoples of the Russian Empire is one. Edward Sherriff Curtis country-wide ethno- graphic and photographic survey of the North American Indian tribes (1907) is another, and in 1908-1909 begins the grandest project of all - nothing less than developing a complete photograph- ic archive - using colour Autochrome - of the peoples of the entire planet. Thus Albert Kahn’s in- spired ‘whole earth catalogue’- style project: The Planetary Archive (1908-1931) - an archive that now contains over 72,000 Autochrome colour photographs of all the world’s peoples. These collec- tions by Prokudin-Gorsky, Sherrif Curtis and Albert Kahn - made before globalisation spread its bland homogeneity across the whole world, have more than proved their worth by giving us a glimpse of the diversity of life and lifestyle just a century ago.
A very similar concern drove Edward Sherriff Curtiss in the USA:
