3-006-899 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Alternators made in Hungary, in the power generating hall of a hydroelectric station in Iolotan on the Murghab River, between 1905 and 1915. Factory Interior with Electrical Generators. In his quest to record the development of the empire, Prokudin-Gorskii photographed this unidentified industrial factory interior with large electrical generators. The generators in this photograph have markings that indicate they were manufactured in Budapest, Hungary. (The Murghab or Marghab River originates in the Ghor Province of central Afghanistan and flows to Turkmenistan). 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.