3-007-144 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Group of camels and four men posed in front of piles of sacks, logs in foreground, [Central Asia?], between 1905 and 1915. Camel caravans remained the most common means of transporting food, raw materials, and manufactured goods in Central Asia well into the railroad era. 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.