[alt-photo] Re: Tri color photos Russia

[Richard Knoppow]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christina Anderson" <zphoto at montana.net>
To: "The alternative photographic processes mailing list" 
<alt-photo-process-list at lists.altphotolist.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 29, 2010 6:09 AM
Subject: [alt-photo] Re: Tri color photos Russia


> Thanks to both Jacques for sharing these links. It is 
> fascinating! More so to see what it looked like back then 
> in color. I wonder how much gum printing was done at that 
> time in Russia. Or tricolor carbon for that matter.
> Chris
> Christina Z. Anderson
> christinaZanderson.com
>

    I believe the original pictures were intended for 
projection. The mystery is the exact method used for making 
the separation negatives since many of the subjects are not 
still life. There is indication in many of the pictures of 
some relative movement between exposures, for instance color 
fringing on wave surfaces in pictures of water. However, the 
time interval must have been very short. There have been a 
number of automatic "repeating" backs designed for this 
purpose, for instance those where the plate holder dropped 
from one exposure to the other, the filters being in the 
holder. Panchromatic sensitization was known by 1900 
although I don't remember the exact date.
    A number of these pictures, with digital manipulation, 
have been posted on various web sites over the last year or 
so. The LOC has very large TIF files of the scans, I think 
of individual negatives as well as combined images, for 
those who want to do their own manipulation.
    The images are of special interest to me since my 
ancestors came from Russia, it gives me a chance to get at 
least a small idea of what the world they immigrated from 
looked like.
    There was a book published some years ago with pictures 
by the "Czar's Photographer" This may have been Gorskii, my 
copy is buried in storage somewhere.
    I did a Google search to find the book and found a 
referece to another "Czar's photographer" named Ivan Bianchi 
with an example at You Tube. I am on a dial-up so didn't try 
to see what this is. The Gorskii stuff is at:
www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/gorskii.html
    Altogether a remarkable body of work.

--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk at ix.netcom.com