Photographer to the Tsar: Revealing the Silk Road The Museum of Russian Art (TMORA) is pleased to present the traveling exhibition Photographer to the Tsar: Revealing the Silk Road.  This extraordinary exhibition features 26 color photographs of the Russian Empire’s portion of the Silk Road that were taken shortly before Russia’s 1917 Revolution by Sergei M. Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944), artist, scientist and pioneer in the field of color photography. Using a camera of his own design, Prokudin-Gorskii traveled to Turkestan in 1906 and 1911, documenting legendary sites and contemporary life thriving amidst the ruins of ancient towns at the heart of the fabled Silk Road.
 
The Silk Road spanned thousands of miles, connecting East and West, stretching from China and India to Central Asia, Afghanistan and the Mediterranean Sea. Caravans of camels transported rare spices, aromatic teas, richly colored textiles, precious Chinese porcelain, gold, and gunpowder to cities in Asia and Europe.  A land of ancient oases and sunburnt deserts, Central Asia was added to the Russian Empire in the mid-19th century through conquest and annexation. Russia’s southern expansion into Turkestan in the 1860s occurred during the same decade it sold Alaska to the United States. Abandoning the seemingly barren northern regions of Alaska, the Russian Empire expanded its reach to the bountiful gardens and cotton fields of Central Asia.
 
In order to examine the newly acquired lands in the south, Tsar Nicolas II supported the work of Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, a Russian chemist and photographer who was conducting a photographic survey of the vast Russian Empire. Traveling in a specially equipped railroad car, Prokudin-Gorskii journeyed to the historic settlements at the heart of the Silk Road including Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, and Merv.  His images of Khans and prisoners, beggars and merchants, crumbling mosques and burgeoning industry, Uzbek town-dwellers and nomadic Kyrgyz, capture the rich diversity of the peoples and cultures along the Silk Road. Taken in the nascent years of photography, Prokudin-Gorskii’s color images are of unprecedented quality and document this era with striking precision and clarity.

The exhibition images are displayed in individual custom-made light boxes fitted with wooden frames that are illuminated in a manner that recreates Prokudin-Gorskii’s technique of using light to enhance his photographs. The captivating images of this exhibition offer a unique and vivid view of the art, culture and history of late Imperial Russia and Central Asia, as well as the history of photography.
 
This beautiful exhibition was featured in the December 2009 issue of Art and Antiques.   
 
Installation photos of both exhibitions are available on TMORA’s FTP site at
<http://ftp2.tmora.org <http://ftp2.tmora.org> (Username: traveling; Password: exhibits). Didactics are available upon request.  
 
For more information and exhibition availability, contact Lana Gendlin Brooks at The Museum of Russian Art/5500 Stevens Ave. South, Minneapolis, MN 55419, <[log in to unmask]">[log in to unmask]> or <www.tmora.org> or <http://www.tmora.org>  or 612-821-9045.
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