Along the Silk Road in 1905

This article and photograph, I found at daughterofthegoldenwest.blogspot.com !!!

This is from a series of photographs taken by one of the pioneers of color photography, Sergei Prokudin Gorsky. who was sponsored by the Tsar to document life in the Russian Empire.

His lengthy travels took him to Samarkand, the second largest city in Uzbekistan, an historic city that occupied an important position on the Silk Road, between China and the West. In 1220 it was sacked by Mongols under the leadership of the legendary Genghis Khan and didn't come under Russia control until 1868. Today, Samarkand is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world.

This 1905 picture was originally taken through three different color filters that were later projected together and combined to create the final print. It shows a group of Jewish students and their teacher.

The image is courtesy of the Prokudin-Gorsky collection in the Library of Congress.