The Library of Congress has done a terrific job at creating an online source for historic photography. Among their recent claims to fame are the color images of a turn of the century Russian photographer who documented his country just before the 1918 revolution.

In the early 1900's, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, a Russian chemist and photographer,  was commissioned by the Tsar to travel across the empire and document the lives and surroundings of the Russian people. He then presented his "optical color projections" at schools in hopes of educating Russian children about their country's culture.

Perhaps even more interesting than the images themselves is how they were made. Sergei developed his own camera and used red, green and blue filters to capture color. The process involved taking three exposures, one with each filter, and then combined them to make a single colored image. Sergei even had a train-car converted into an on-the-road darkroom.

After Sergei died in 1944, the Library of Congress bought his negatives and set about recreating his prints. With the help of computer technology, they were able to produce some brilliant photographs that are true to Sergei's technique.

 This all came full circle when the Denver Post published a series of the shots to their News Photo blog, "Captured," this week. Thanks to the internet, people around the world now have an opportunity to learn from Sergei's project, one that was cut short by revolution.

These photos are a testament to the historical value of images. It does, however, raise the question of whether digital photographs have the same staying power those captured on film and slides. Will the world in 3009 be able to recreate our photos from a memory card or a blog? I guess only time will tell.

(All photos by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii via loc.gov)