The Empire in Color: 28 Incredible Photos Documented Life in Russia From 1905 to 1915

Using emerging technological advances in color photography, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) made numerous photographic trips to systematically document the Russian Empire. He conducted most of his visual surveys between 1909 and 1915, although some of his work dates as early as 1905. The Empire at this time stretched 7,000 miles from west to east and 3,000 miles from north to south and comprised one-sixth of the earth's land mass. It was the largest empire in history and spanned what today are eleven different times zones.

Tsar Nicholas II supported this ambitious project by providing passes and transportation: by rail, boat and automobile. Take a look:

Family at harvest time

General view of the factory, Kovzha

Novaia Ladoga

Woodcutters on the Svir River

Russian children sitting on the side of a hill in the countryside near White Lake

Pinkhus Karlinskii, supervisor of Chernigov floodgate

Peasants haying

Saint Paul dam in Deviatiny

Three young women offer berries to visitors to their izba in a rural area along the Sheksna River

The city of Belozersk from the fortress wall

Bashkir near his house

Shepherd boy on the Sim River

Fisherman on the Iset River

On the Sim River

Peasant woman breaking flax, Perm Province

Guard dogs

Kasli Iron Works in the Ural Mountains

A family, with shovels and horse-drawn carts, working at the iron mines in the Bakaly hills

Father, son and granddaughter at the Zlatoust arms plant

General view of the Kremlin, from the bell tower of the Church of All Saints

Night camp by a rock on the bank of the Chusovaia

City of Tobolsk from the northeast

Trinity Cathedral of the Holy Trinity Monastery, Belgorod

Dagestani

Kirosskii quarry along the Murmansk Railway

Serge Mikha lovich Prokudin-Gorski and two men in Cossak dress

Austrian prisoners of war near a barrack near Kiappeselga

Baling machine for hay

(via Library of Congress)