Combining the traditional and the modern is a natural process for Jan Kath Rug Company. The collection “From Russia With Love“, draws ispiration from the Romanov period of rug design and the Russian aristocratics affection for French needle point work and florals at the turn of the century.

The imagery of Visual Campaign, manipulating the images of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographic repertoire to include the Collection ispired to Russia, reflects the same nostalgy.

Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky, the Russian photographer and pioneer of color photography, initiates a remarkable documentary project in 1909. His mission was to record – in full and vibrant color – the vast and diverse Russian Empire: its people, cities, and the new development and infrastructure projects which were starting to bring Russia into the twentieth century.

He became interested in Colour separation, a method of colour photography proposed forty years before, but which had remained technically impractical. Colour separation used filters to create three different images of a scene, one for each of the primary colours. When light was directed back through these images and filters, and the resulting projections overlaid, they formed a correct colour image. For this porpouse, he used a specialized camera to take three black and white photographs in a row, with red, green, and blue filters.

Here, with his story, is a selection of his amazing century old full color pictures. Many of these pictures look as if they could have been taken yesterday, with only the costumes worn by the people captured in their moment of time betraying the age of the work.

(Prokudin-Gorskii, Photo courtesy of Jah Kath, Collage of Collection ”From Russia With Love“)

(Prokudin-Gorskii, Album page with related prints, 1909)

(Prokudin-Gorskii, Photo courtesy of Jah Kath, Collage of Collection ”From Russia With Love“)

 (Prokudin-Gorskii, Photo courtesy of Jah Kath, Collage of Collection ”From Russia With Love“)

(Photo courtesy of Jah Kath, Catalogue of Collection ”From Russia With Love“)

(Prokudin-Gorskii, Dinner during haying, 1909)

(Prokudin-Gorskii, Mugan. Settler’s family. Settlement of Grafovka, 1910)

(Prokudin-Gorskii, Views along the Mariinskii Canal and river system, Russian Empire, 1909)

 (Prokudin-Gorskii, Views in the Caucasus and Black Sea area, Russian Empire, 1909)

 (Prokudin-Gorskii, Views in the Caucasus and Black Sea area, Russian Empire, 1910)

(Prokudin-Gorskii, Views in the Ural Mountains, survey of industrial area, Russian Empire, 1910)