Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky: Difference between revisions

In 1890, Prokudin-Gorsky married Anna Aleksandrovna Lavrova, and later the couple had two sons, Mikhail and Dmitri, and a daughter, Ekaterina.<ref name=biogaranina>{{cite web|last=Garanina |first=Svetlana |year=2003 |title=Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky Biography| url=http://www.prokudin-gorsky.ru/download/Prokudin-Gorsky%20Biography.pdf}}</ref> Anna was the daughter of the Russian industrialist Aleksandr Stepanovich Lavrov, an active member in the Imperial Russian Technical Society (IRTS).<ref name=biogaranina /> Prokudin-Gorsky subsequently became the director of the executive board of Lavrov's metal works near [[Saint Petersburg]] and remained so until the [[October Revolution]]. He also joined Russia's oldest photographic society, the photography section of the IRTS, presenting papers and lecturing on the science of photography.<ref name=ica>{{cite journal |last=Adamson |first=Jeremy |author2=Zinkham, Helena |year=2002 |title=The Prokudin-Gorskii Legacy: Color Photographs of the Russian Empire, 1905-1915 |journal=Comma |volume=3-4 |issue=''Archives and Archival Issues of Russia'' |pages=107–143 |publisher=[[International Council on Archives]] |isbn=3-598-01357-4 |url=http://www.ica.org/en/node/30480 |format=PDF}}</ref> In 1901, he established a photography studio and laboratory in Saint Petersburg. In 1902, he traveled to Berlin and spent six weeks studying color sensitization and three-color photography with [[photochemistry]] professor [[Adolf Miethe]], the most advanced practitioner in Germany at that time.<ref name=pgochron>[http://prokudin-gorsky.org/rightpages.php?lang=en&fname=chronology The chronology at Prokudin-Gorsky.org] (accessed 26 September 2012) reports six weeks of study with Miethe in 1902. Other accounts give the year as 1889, but a primary source for that extremely early date is not apparent and it does not accord with the circa 1889 biographical details of either man. The major English-language source reporting 1889 (Adamson and Zinkham, p. 108) describes Miethe as "A brilliant young professor at the Charlottenburg Technische Hochschule..." and states (footnote, same page) that "While in Berlin, Prokudin-Gorskii is said to have given technical courses in photochemistry and spectrum analysis at the Technische Hochschule...", which evidences confusion of the facts somewhere along the line: biographies of Miethe all agree that he, not Prokudin-Gorsky, was the professor of photochemistry and spectroanalysis at the Königlich Technischen Hochschule (Royal Technical University) in Berlin, a post he accepted by invitation in 1899 after the sudden death (17 December 1898) of its previous longtime occupant, [[Hermann Wilhelm Vogel]], the discoverer of dye sensitization and himself a color photography experimenter. It was apparently Miethe's first teaching position and the beginning of his involvement with color photography. Until then he had been employed by optical firms such as Voigtländer but was already a notable author, journal editor and inventor in the field of (black-and-white) photography.</ref> Throughout the years, Prokudin-Gorsky's photographic work, publications and slide shows to other scientists and photographers in Russia, Germany and France earned him praise,<ref name=biogaranina /> and in 1906 he was elected the president of the IRTS photography section and editor of Russia's main photography journal, the ''Fotograf-Liubitel''.<ref name=ica />