3-005-451 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Sofron, a Nivkh, 1890. This photograph is from a collection consisting of an album and individual photographs preserved in the Aleksandrovsk Municipal History and Literature Museum "A.P. Chekhov and Sakhalin" in Alekandrovsk-Sakhalinskiy, Sakhalin Island (off Russia's southeast coast). The photographs were taken on Sakhalin Island during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and provide rare glimpses of the island's settlements, prisons, and inhabitants. Sakhalin Island was used by imperial Russia as a penal colony and place of exile for criminals and political prisoners. Between 1869 and 1906, more than 30,000 inmates and exiles endured the difficult conditions of the forced-labor colony on the island. The collection depicts public life and institutions in the town of Aleksandrovsk Post, convicts working under harsh conditions or in chains, and political prisoners. The photographs also show the daily life both of the Nivkh people, indigenous to the northern part of the island, and the Russian settler population.