At the very dawn of the 20th century, Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) developed a three lens camera that produced pictures of unbelievable quality for the time. Impressed, the Tsar Nicolas II sent him on a photographic survey of the Russian Empire.
The pictures Sergei managed to take, despite being over a century old, look like they could have been taken yesterday, giving a crystal clear window into the daily lives of Russians and their subjects ten years before the Soviet Union.
I highly recommend you search Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii for yourself, because all his pictures are breathtaking and this is far from all of them.
