3-006-895 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Melon vendor, Samarkand, between 1905 and 1915. Dressed in traditional Central Asian attire, a vendor of locally grown melons poses at his stand in the marketplace of Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan. Russian chemist and photographer Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1863-1944) was a pioneer in colour photography which he used to document early 20th-century Russia and her empire, including the vanishing way of life of tribal peoples along the Silk Route in Central Asia. In a railway-carriage darkroom provided by Czar Nicholas II, Prokudin-Gorsky used the three-colour photography process to record traditional costumes and occupations, churches and mosques - many now Unesco World Heritage sites - as well as modernisation in agriculture, industry and transport.