An Armenian woman in national costume poses for Prokudin-Gorskii on a hillside near Artvin (in present day Turkey), circa 1910.
This series of exquisitely beautiful images from southern and central Russia is already all over the web via the Boston Globe, but Coilhouse has to post a heads up in case anybody missed them. Absolutely stunning. Boston.com editor-in-chief, Alan Taylor, says:
“With images from southern and central Russia in the news lately due to extensive wildfires, I thought it would be interesting to look back in time with this extraordinary collection of color photographs taken between 1909 and 1912. In those years, photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) undertook a photographic survey of the Russian Empire with the support of Tsar Nicholas II. He used a specialized camera to capture three black and white images in fairly quick succession, using red, green and blue filters, allowing them to later be recombined and projected with filtered lanterns to show near true color images.”
A man and woman pose in Dagestan, ca. 1910.
“The high quality of the images, combined with the bright colors, make it difficult for viewers to believe that they are looking 100 years back in time – when these photographs were taken, neither the Russian Revolution nor World War I had yet begun. Collected here are a few of the hundreds of color images made available by the Library of Congress, which purchased the original glass plates back in 1948.”
The full gallery is viewable here, high res. Previously on Coilhouse:
Isfandiyar Jurji Bahadur, Khan of the Russian protectorate of Khorezm (Khiva, now a part of modern Uzbekistan), full-length portrait, seated outdoors, ca. 1910.
We’ve talked about Russian stereotyping a couple of times in the past, and both instances have been followed [for the most part] by thoughtful, lengthy discussions. Not this time! Here’s a very, very silly and over-the-top commercial for DirecTV featuring a tacky Russian tycoon in a hyper-gaudy, gilded lair surrounded by fur-clad floozies who hand him remotes atop trays loaded with gold bars. This short video is jam-packed with money-LOLs. There are bodyguards, large dogs playing at a poker table, gold busts of the tycoon presented by models, and my favorite: a miniature pet giraffe. And on the topic of LOLs – this character’s manner of speech is straight off the internet, the scene opening with him saying, “Opulence, I has it”. I just can’t bring myself to be offended, it’s too damn funny.
Surreal video out of Russia where wildfires are ravaging central and western parts of the country following the hottest July on record. A car-full of volunteers helping residents of the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast village of Tamboles find themselves very nearly trapped on the road leading out of town. What follows is, as one of the participants notes, a tense car ride through a Dante-inspired landscape. Don’t be surprised if you breathe a little sigh of relief along with these gentleman as they burst through into the sunlight at the end.
A patchwork biography of Igor Oleynikov: Growing up in Lubertsy, Russia — a small town outside of Moscow — his entrance into the art world was at the Russian animation studio Soyuzmultfilm in 1979. Since 1986 he has been illustrating children’s books and has done 25 to date.
Children’s book illustration is a lot like veterinary school — the common misconception being that medical school has a much higher barrier of entry, and yet the opposite is true. Children’s book illustration is a notoriously difficult nut to crack.
Oleynikov’s work is testament to the talent involved in the field. His paintings are lush and yet his tones are muted just enough to give everything a dream-like quality. In addition, they possess that air of danger and foreboding so often found in literature for young readers. Really, I could look at these all day. See more after the jump and even more here, here, and here.
I must admit, I’m afraid I might be doing a great disservice with this week’s FAM. Not in the sense that the film chosen is of inferior quality or offensive; indeed I have plenty of those which I will no doubt post in the future, without any feelings of guilt. No, my unease comes with the inferior method of delivery. It arises from the fact that I may be exposing people to a film that should only be viewed in the highest possible fidelity which the above offering on YouTube is decidedly not.
Today’s FAM is Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark from 2002, a film that I might describe as “decadent” and “luscious” were I a man given to pithy, vague descriptors, which I assure you I am not [Editor's Note: He is.] Filmed in one fluid take we follow the disembodied voice of our narrator (in actuality the voice of Sokurov) and unseen gentleman who intimates that he, in fact, died in a horrible accident. Accompanying him is “the European” (based on the Marquis de Custine). Together they explore the Winter Palace, which is now the centerpiece of the Russian Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. As they wander from room to room, so to do they wander through Russian history, though those well-versed in said history will note that events depicted are not in chronological order.
What follows is a technically astonishing [Editor's Note: See?] piece of film-making. Meandering through 33 rooms and featuring over two thousand actors and three orchestras, the result is a history lesson within a dream. As such, it’s all the more frustrating to not be able to see all the small details present on the actors’ costumes are the information overload presented by the splendor of the Winter Palace. I urge you to track down a copy if you enjoyed it here as the experience is really night and day.
The curators of all things weird and Soviet bloc over at English Russia have a collection of wonderful illustrations from the 1976 edition of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, by Mikhail Belomlinsky. A prolific illustrator of children’s books, Belominsky’s interpretations are that perfect mix of foreboding and fun. I am especially smitten with his rendition of Gollum. I would love to get my hands on a copy for the illustrations alone, regardless of my inability to actually read it.
A treat for this, the 16th of April, in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Ten. Today the FAM presents the 2004 BBC documentary Tetris: From Russia With Love at the risk of offending the beautiful yet cruel Nadya by forcing her to relive the traumatic events that led to the loss of her family and her subsequent immigration to the States. Even now as I sit here writing this, I strain my ears, listening for the tell-tale tapping of her limping gate, the staccato rhythm of cane and wooden leg working in lurching concert upon the stone floors and metal walkways of The Catacombs.
My editor’s sordid past aside, the BBC did a terrific job of examining the story of quite possibly the most addictive videogame ever made. A model of simplicity there are probably few of my generation that don’t remember their experience with Tetris; and I’m willing to bet that more than a few can relate stories of falling asleep and dreaming of falling tetrominoes or of being unable to expunge the home console version’s music from their brains.
The life of Tetris — created deep within Soviet Russia and leaked through the iron curtain, leaving a trail of in-fighting, threats, and questionable copyright law in its wake — is one of the great, epic tales in videogames. It encapsulates a time in the industry when games were just beginning to implant themselves as a cultural force and, in a broader sense, was a portent of things to come, arriving at the same time that the Soviet Union was beginning to dissolve.
In fact it’s easy to take Tetris as metaphor entirely too far. In it’s plainness and restraint it opens itself up to any number of meanings. It is perhaps best then to acknowledge it as a great game and leave it at that, lest one be tempted to sum up the end of the 20th century in terms of falling blocks.
Ah, the legendary 14th episode of Nu Pogodi (“You Just Wait!”), a ’70s/’80s children’s cartoon outlining the tormented, love-hate, co-dependent relationship of Zayatz and Volk (bunny and wolf), the Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner of the USSR. Their relationship spanned 16 “classic” episodes (from 1969 to 1986) and included plenty of substance abuse, violence, “bad touches,” and one very awkward romantic dinner.
The 14th episode – with its murderous rabbit simulacrum, metrosexual hair-cutting/pants-pressing robots, junky schteeempunk Volkswagon (YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!), and zero-G flight simulators that play Space Race-inspired Soviet pop music. Episode 14 – my first exposure to electronic music of any sort. The techno kicks in at 2:57, when the main Space/Technology portion of the episode begins. In this episode, the wolf chases the rabbit around the “Dom Yunogo Technika,” which translates roughly to “House/Society of Young Tech-heads.” (That’s my best 5 AM translation, at least). Before 2:57, there’s a short mini-episode in which Rabbit & Wolf share a dinner together – the aforementioned date, which ended in hilarious tragedy and made the show go down in Russian gay animation/film history, as both Rabbit & Wolf are male.
As with all episodes of Nu Pogodi, which can be found on YouTube, the wide-ranging music is one of the best parts. This episode is one of the best examples of that. The tracklist of Episode 14, which includes some appearances by Western artists, is this:
1. Alla Pugachova – Million Alyh Roz
2. Digital Emotion — Get Up, Action
3. Digital Emotion — Go Go Yellow Screen
4. Bonnie and Clyde – Leroy Holmes
5. Methusalem (Empire) – Black Hole (Bavarian Affair)
6. Digital Emotion — The Beauty & The Beast
7. Zemlyane – Trava u Doma
8. VIA Leisya Pesnya – Kachaetsya Vagon
If there is indeed a heaven, and Hasil Adkins and Lux Interior are hanging out together on some leopard-print porch swing up there, how much do you want to bet they play “rock, paper, shotgun” every morning to decide who gets the honor of guardian angel duty for this fella?
At the risk of offending the Soviets in the audience I present this gentleman to you with limited commentary; instead allowing his melodious singing voice and terrifying rictus to speak for themselves.
