The Peoples of the Russian Empire in Colour — Photographs by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky

These colour photographs were taken in the early 20th century. Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky first showed his test shots to Emperor Nicholas II, who in 1909 commissioned him to photograph life across every region of the empire. More than a century later, the portraits he brought back — families in traditional dress, children on a red carpet by a yurt, villagers on a hillside by a church — still look startlingly alive.