Primrose: Early Colour Photography in Russia, The Photographer's Gallery

Russian photography is experiencing a renaissance in London this summer.  Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky's work is being shown in Primrose: Early Colour Photography in Russia, an exhibition at the Photographers' Gallery showcasing the important role played by colour photography in Russian culture from the end of the nineteenth century. This stands as a perfect complement to the contemporary Russian photographers in Close and Far: Russian Photography Now at Calvert 22. The show at the Photographers' Gallery is a homage to colour photography as well as a document of the many transformations undergone by Russia in the twentieth century.   

The history 

Prokudin-Gorsky was a Russian chemist who developed one of the first colour film systems. He was commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II to travel throughout Russia, including parts of Siberia and remote regions which have never again been documented, to take photographs of the Russian landscape, people, and way of life. These photographs provide an unmatched view of pre-revolution Russia, and are some of the earliest colour photographs in the world. 

The exhibition

The photographs in Primrose are chronologically arranged to show how photographic technique both influenced and documented historical events. These include early hand tinted photographs of Tsarist officials, photo-montages developed by the Bolshevik avant-garde of the revolution, colour photography used in the socialist realist propaganda of the communist regime, and finally as a mass medium when it became cheaply available in the 1970s. As well as being intriguing art objects, these photographs show how image making technology is not only a means of recording history, but can also be an agent in shaping it.