Eclectic Echoes

The Empire That Was

There is an online exhibition at the Library of Congress called The Empire That Was Russia. It is an amazing exhibit of color photographs taken during the last decade of Tsarist Russia by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. They are images Prokudin-Gorskii took with his homemade (and designed) view camera. He used color filters to take three images in quick succession on a 3” by 9” strip of glass plate. Reminds me a bit of the fun of using my old DigiView from Newtek back in the late 80’s. For those not familiar with it, the DigiView was a digitizer for the Amiga computer, it connected to a black and white video camera. Rotating a color filter wheel through the Red, Blue and Green sections you could “scan” any picture (or for that matter any scene that stood still for 3 minutes) into the computer. Slow and tedious by todays standards, but for the time it was a breakthrough for digital artists and home use. In concept and even execution very much the same process as used a century before by Prokudin-Gorskii.

The LOC has preserved the glass plates and other items from Prokudin-Gorskii’s estate. Now the original images have been digitally reproduced and can be seen much as when the photographer showed them through a custom three beam slide projector. Many of the subjects of the pictures will never be seen again, having been destroyed during one the various revolutions, world wars, etc. There are many beautiful churches, mosques and palaces represented in the Architecture . The Ethnic Diversity section is a wonderful sampling of some of the ethnic groups that comprised the Tsarist Russian Empire. Beautiful images. My favorites would have to be The emir of Bukhara and the View of the Nilova Monastery.

One of the best things about this exhibition is that this is how museum exhibits should be. While I would much rather be at the LOC and see these in person (when it was available there in 2001 that is), this online exhibition is wonderful, and allows at least a substantial and prolonged glimpse at what is offered by the in person exhibit at the LOC itself. It is accessible, educational, and entertaining. Hopefully more of the public museums will be moving forward with this type of exhibit.

The National Museum of the American Indian should have by now opened it’s doors — They actually, first among the Smithsonian museums, have it in their charter to make as much of the museum as possible accessible to long distance visitors. During late 2001 and 2002, I had a number of wonderful discussions with various people involved in the NMAI museum, it’s charter and development as a museum for the 21st century — video, web, imagery all connected and much of it available over the organizations Gigabit+ cabled network. Of all the SI museums for a geek/artist to work, that would be it. I had hoped for some quite some time to work for the Smithsonian while I was still in D.C. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons — chief among them the extremely convoluted and drawn out hiring procedure — I never got the opportunity to make that happen.

Anyway, I came across the exhibit (I’m somewhat ashed to admit, as I used to visit LOC once every two weeks when I was looking at them for potential employment) via The Argus.