Brilliant 100-year-old COLOUR photography!

I've just been looking at a COLOUR photograph of Leo Tolstoy amongst a vast collection of truly astonishing images taken by a Russian photographer named Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii during the first two decades of the 20th Century. There are hundreds of these images, mostly of rural and town scenes, but all of them of such quality that they could have been taken yesterday. Indeed, in the relatively few images that include people, the vibrancy and naturalness of the colour is so real that it's difficult to reconcile with the fact that those individuals depicted are now dead long ago.

I was recently spellbound by a similar American collection viewed on the internet, which were taken in the mid 1930s in fabulous Kodachrome, but this Prokudin-Gorskii collection is something else again. Unfortunately, me being a complete computer ignoramus, I have no idea how to provide a link...but, of course, 'Google is your friend', as I've been told on more than one occasion!

And why am I posting this on a theatre website? Well, it strikes me that it's an invaluable resource for costume and set designers...as is also the American collection I've mentioned (which I can't remember the title of right now, but do have bookmarked and will advise if anyone's interested), as well as just an absolutely fantastic view of ordinary life as it was long before most of us were born.

Have a look...and I'm sure you'll be as astounded as I was!