The fascination with Russia’s Romanov dynasty — that of its last czars — has never decreased.The new book, “Twilight of the Romanovs: A Photographic Odyssey Across Imperial Russia” by historians Philipp Blom and Veronica Buckley features the vast panorama of the Russian empire, before and at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution , in a collection of never seen before photos.
The arresting photos, some of the best in color, were taken from 1855 to 1918. That’s right, color — not shades created by hand-tinting. Most of these vibrant shots were taken by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, who documented the Russian empire in color between 1905 and 1915 in a project that had been funded by Czar Nicholas II, while a few others come from a family album that belonged to the playwright and novelist Leonid Andreyev.
A note in “Twilight of the Romanovs” describes the method: “Many of the original color photographs…were taken with an early camera that used three lenses with color filters to register the red, yellow and blue spectrums sequentially on a photographic plate, with a fourth lens capturing the image in black and white. These four images were then superimposed and projected as a single picture.”
– source wwd.com
The book cover, with a photo of grand duchesses Tatiana and Olga and lady-in-waiting Anna Vyrubova, in the Gulf of Finland.
Photo by Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
The actress Vera Komissarzhevskaya in 1900.
Photo by Carl Bulla/Imagno/Austrain Archives, Vienna
Tsar Nicholas and Alexandra II on the royal yacht Standard, 1912.
Photo by An album belonging to Anna Vyrubov/Libaray of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Washington, D.C.
Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarevich Alexei
Photo by Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT
A dacha on the water at Materiki, near Vologda, from the album “Views Along the Mariinsk Canal and River System.”
Photo by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky/Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Washington D.C.
A lunch party in the summer house of dramatist and fiction writer Leonid Andreyev (center back in white suit) in Vammelsuu (Serovo), Gulf of Finland, 1912.
Photo by Andreyev Family Album/Leeds University
Summer idyll, from the album “Different Views and Studies of the Russian Empire.”
Photo by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky/Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Washington D.C.
Vadim, writer Leonid Andreyev’s son, in 1912.
Photo by Andreyev Family Album/Leeds University
Farm girls carrying berries at Kirillov on the northern Dvina Canal.
Photo by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky/Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Washington D.C.
Young woman in elaborate traditional dress in front of a Kazakh yurt in Central Asia, shot between 1905-1915, from the album “Views of Central Asia.”
Photo by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky/Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Washington D.C.
Alim Khan, the last emir of Bukhara, now part of Uzbekistan, in 1911.
Photo by Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky/Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Washington D.C.
A Jewish water carrier in Vilnius, 1900.
Photo by Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C, Carpenter Collection
A postcard image of the Ironworks in Ural, 1910.
Photo by Imagno/Austrian Archives, Vienna
St. Petersburg crowds outside the office of the newspaper The New Times, reading the war reports, 1915.
Photo by Carl Bulla/Imagno/Ullsteinbild
Nizhny Novgorod, the Fair Bridge, now the Kanavinski Bridge, over the Oka, c. 1890 to 1900.
Photo by Imagno/Austrian Archives, Vienna
the CITIZENS of FASHION 
this is great! thank you
Delightful.
Love to have this book! Anna Vyrubova was not a lady-in-waiting to the Empress, she was a close, personal confidante, and the second photo is of Nicholas and his mother, Maria Feoderovna.
I love this family! I visited St Petersburg anb Moscow two years ago and I fell in love with the Tsar’s fabulous estates… <3!!! And Ermitage of course.
Stay tuned, I'll write about that.
Bye, Mchan