Although the Soviet Union traditionally claims superiority when it comes to jailing and exiling people in deplorable conditions, this photo places the Emirate of Bukhara as a notable competitor. Perhaps only a mere footnote compared to the notorious purges of Joseph Stalin, the prison at Zindan certainly doesn’t seem any more appealing than a Soviet gulag […]
Monthly Archives: August 2014
Red Star, Week 1 Posts
How the W̶e̶s̶t̶ Steppes were won.
by jslattery •
Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky was well known in the late Imperial, and even early Soviet, period of Russia for his work in photography. He spent ten years of his life chronographing Russia in color photographs. Prokudin-Gorsky often photographed different people of Russian. … Continue reading →
Week 1 Posts
Does Religion Matter Anymore?
by jmhawkins •
The Russian Orthodox Church has been a major factor in Russian culture, economics, and politics since its origin in 988 AD. In 1589, Moscow was named the patriarch for the Russian Orthodox Church, but there would be no separation of … Continue reading →
Week 1 Posts
19th/20th Century Russian Ag.
by phillip5 •
The caption of this photo says it depicts monks planting potatoes in fields reclaimed from conifer forest. This got me thinking about all the different times I had learned about clearing land for agricultural use, and for that matter all the different countries it takes place in. This could spark a debate over many controversial […]
Week 1 Posts
Transportation and Industrialization
by jenniferh •
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/prk2000002466/ The photo captioned, “Trans-Siberian Railway metal truss bridge on stone piers, over the Kama River near Perm, Ural Mountains Region” included in the Prokudin-Gorskiĭ collection, gives a look into the longest rail line in the world. The picture … Continue reading →
Week 1 Posts
From Zindan to Black Dolphin
by katiewells9 •
This photo shows a zindan, a traditional Central Asian prison, with prisoners and a Russian guard. A zindan is “in essence a pit in the earth with a low structure built on top.” I chose this photo because one day over the summer I came home to my three siblings watching a Netflix documentary titled Russia’s Toughest Prisons. They […]
Uncategorized
Prokudin-Gorskii photography: Jewish Children with their Teacher
by cpurvis2 •
As a photography student myself, there is nothing I love more than photographs of people. These images present much more than a face– they illustrate a sense of time, culture and place. The collection of Prokudin-Gorskii images vary from objects … Continue reading →
Week 1 Posts
Agricultural Crisis
by kathaskew •
The emancipation of the serfdom left profound consequences in its wake. This post will, in particular, focus on the effects that the emancipation had wrought on Russia’s agricultural industry between the years of 1855 and 1890. To compound on this, … Continue reading →
Week 1 Posts
Big Country, Not Enough Guns
by Garland Pittard •
When I first looked at this photo, all I saw was a family of Russians from Zlatoust, near the Ural Mountains. After reading the caption next to the picture and seeing the what this family’s job in the Russian society was, it became evident to me that that these three people were much more than […]
Red Star, Week 1 Posts
Drinking Tea-Russian Style
by Kelly Cooper •
While the rest of Europe was working through the famous Industrial Revolution, Russia continued to work in more crude forms of agricultural techniques. After the failure of the Crimean War, Russia’s regime received a wake-up call and attempted to industrialize … Continue reading →