3-006-893 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Kareshka boat yard [Russian Empire], 1909. Caption label from exhibit of digital copy in "The Empire That Was Russia" (2001) - Transportation: Kareshka Boat Yards. A variety of canal boats and barges, large and small, at a sheltered inlet off the southwest shore of Lake Onega on the Mariinskii canal system near the small town of Voznesenie in the north of European Russia. Russian chemist and photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1863-1944) was a pioneer in colour photography which he used to document early 20th-century Russia and her empire, including the vanishing way of life of tribal peoples along the Silk Route in Central Asia. In a railway-carriage darkroom provided by Czar Nicholas II, Prokudin-Gorsky used the three-colour photography process to record traditional costumes and occupations, churches and mosques - many now Unesco World Heritage sites - as well as modernisation in agriculture, industry and transport.