3-006-970 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

View of Tiflis from Botanic mountain, between 1905 and 1915. This panoramic view of Tiflis shows the city nestled in a valley amid ridges in the Caucasus Mountains. The city today is Tbilisi, the capital of the now independent Republic of Georgia. At the time this photograph was taken, the city had a multinational population of 160,000, including Georgians, Armenians, Russians, Persians, Poles, Tatars, and Jews. 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.