(b St Petersburg, 1863; d Paris, 1943). Russian photographer. He graduated from the Institute of Applied Sciences in St Petersburg as a chemist but is known for his ambitious use of an early three-colour process in photography, and for his documentary photographs of Russian life commissioned by Nicholas II (reg 1894–1917). After teaching at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin (1889–early 1890s), under the auspices of Adolph Mieth (1862–1927), Prokudin-Gorsky travelled to Paris where he began experimenting with colour photography. Later returning to Russia, he became a member of the Imperial Technological Society and implemented its first courses in photography and laboratory methods. In 1898 he published two volumes dealing with the technical methods of printing and copying negatives and with the use of the recently developed hand-held cameras. Prokudin-Gorsky documented the Russo-Japanese war in Manchuria (1904) and between 1906 and 1909 was the editor-in-chief of the Russian photographic journal Fotograf Lyubitel’. Between 1905 and 1915 he executed over 2000 colour negatives of Russian life. He used a specially designed camera, with an apparatus that automatically changed colour filters and exposed the photographic plate three times (an additive process; see PHOTOGRAPHY, §I). His documentary images were then stacked and projected via a prism that registered the images in full colour. After the 1917 revolution, he emigrated to Norway and subsequently lived in England and later France. Most of his work is now in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.