Through Three Lenses: The Visionary Who Captured an Empire in Color

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky is often remembered as one of the most visionary photographers of the early twentieth century, a figure whose passion for science and the visual arts led him to create some of the first true color photographs in history. Born into a noble family in Russia, he combined a privileged education with an insatiable curiosity for emerging technologies, especially those related to chemistry, optics, and photographic processes. His early years were marked by experiments that would eventually define his lifelong quest to capture the world in color at a time when black-and-white photography dominated every corner of visual documentation.