{"id":387,"date":"2005-02-24T20:22:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-24T20:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=387"},"modified":"2011-04-04T09:09:05","modified_gmt":"2011-04-04T15:09:05","slug":"387","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=387","title":{"rendered":"The Russian Empire in Color"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>Before there was such a thing as color film, a Russian photographer figured out a way to project the equivalent of color slides. His work can be seen in an online exhibition at the Library of Congress<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Off-topic for this blog? Bear with me.<\/p>\n

Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) was commissed by the government of the last tsar, Nicholas II, to travel the Russian Empire taking pictures of people, buildings, bridges, and other sights. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 overthrew the tsar, and Prokudin-Gorskii left for Paris the next year, taking many of his negatives with him.<\/p>\n

When we have looked at too many sepia-tone photographs and old, herky-jerky black-and-white movies, we can almost forget that people a century ago lived in a colorful world too. You can see old Russia (and parts of Central Asia) in full color in these pictures.<\/p>\n

Oh yes, the Russian royal family’s personal physician was Dr. Sergei Botkin, who was gunned down along with them by the Communists in 1918. Dr. Botkin’s son, Gleb, 17, would have been there too, except for a transportation foul-up that left him in another town.<\/p>\n

Gleb Botkin eventually came to the United States and made a career as a commercial artist and writer. Although one branch of the Orthodox Church has canonized Tsar Nicholas II as a saint, the picture Botkin gives of him and his family in his memoir The Real Romanovs<\/em> could be summarized as “nice people, but clueless.”<\/p>\n

In 1939 Botkin founded his own Pagan religious group, the Church of Aphrodite, first in Long Island, N.Y., and then in Charlottesville, Va., after he moved there. The “church” ended with his death in the mid-1960s, but at least one member, W. Holman Keith, was connected with subsequent Pagan bodies such as Feraferia, the Church of the Eternal Source, and the Church of All Worlds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before there was such a thing as color film, a Russian photographer figured out a way to project the equivalent of color slides. His work can be seen in an online exhibition at the Library of Congress. Off-topic for this blog? Bear with me. Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) was commissed by the government of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aphrodite"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-387","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":964,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=964","url_meta":{"origin":387,"position":0},"title":"Where’s the Wall? I Need to Hit It","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Forgive the melodramatic headline, but I have been grading tests and research papers for about six hours. At least \"the big class\" is done, and what lies ahead will be more pleasant reading--essays by better student writers.So to make up for the lack of blogging, some odds and ends:\u2022 A\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1255,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1255","url_meta":{"origin":387,"position":1},"title":"Pagans among Suspects in Priest’s Murder","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"(Welcome, vistors from The Wild Hunt. Stick around, click a few links.) A Russian Orthodox priest is murdered in his Moscow church, and suspicion falls both on Muslims and on Russian Pagans.But note the titles of his books.We know too much about people who shout \"Allah Akbar\" and then pull\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5491,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5491","url_meta":{"origin":387,"position":2},"title":"A Quick Encounter between Fire and Thunder","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The next issue of The Pomegranate will include a special section on the revival of Paganism in Latvia, a revival that blossomed in that Baltic nation's first period of independence, 1917\u20131940, or between the Russian Revolution, which released Latvia from the old empire, and the beginnings of World War II,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"ogle_002_sm","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/ogle_002_sm1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/ogle_002_sm1.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/ogle_002_sm1.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":7553,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7553","url_meta":{"origin":387,"position":3},"title":"The War on Halloween","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 30, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"It's that time of year, time for the Russians to take their turn at complaining that Halloween is an evil Western import. Segei Aksyonov, who has been placed in charge of the Crimean peninsula, which Russia recently snatched from Ukraine, called the holiday \"cultural colonisation.\" Meanwhile, a spokes-priest for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"culture\"","block_context":{"text":"culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=culture"},"img":{"alt_text":"Sergei_Aksyonov_3486318b","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/Sergei_Aksyonov_3486318b-300x187.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4996,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4996","url_meta":{"origin":387,"position":4},"title":"Russian Seasonal Dream Rituals","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I missed Orthodox Christmas by\u00a0 a day, but here is an article on Russian Pagan dream practice. \u00a0Here I'll try to give the \"taste\" of the authentic Russian tradition of dream work that has very deep roots in pre-Christian culture.\u00a0 Mainly the Russian tradition tells about highly practical dream incubation\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dreaming\"","block_context":{"text":"dreaming","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dreaming"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5001,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5001","url_meta":{"origin":387,"position":5},"title":"Critiquing “Double Belief” in Russian Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 9, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Consider this a follow-up to yesterday's post on Russian dream rituals, which linked to an article whose author totally accepted the idea of spiritual practices with\u00a0 \"very deep roots in pre-Christian culture.\" I had not realized this, but Routledge published a book critiquing the idea of \"double belief\"\u00a0 (dvoeverie) three\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2518,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387\/revisions\/2518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}