Soon the Christmas tree will come down, we have left it up to get through Orthodox Christmas—or as we call it Ukrainian Christmas. While we did not grow up in, and are not of any of the Eastern Orthodox churches, both our families have roots in the Ukraine. Tammy’s family of course is Ukrainian primarily and the Heupel’s are Germans who settled in the Ukraine in the early 1700’s then emigrated to the US in the last decades of the 19th century. For our part we plan to show Johann his heritage in many ways, but among them we will be celebrating Ukrainian or Orthodox Christmas each year, this year in a small way, but later we will be adding to the celebration by having a traditional Ukrainian meal for that day.
On the subject the Eastern European part of our roots, 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.
Thanks to The Argus for bringing it to my attention.
