What if one could time travel back to the turn of the 19th century? What if you were suddenly in the Russian Empire, what was once the heart of now occupied Tartary. What if you had also brought with you a modern digital camera and took some photographs for the rest of us to see?

Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii (Сергей Прокудин-Горский), who lived from 1863 until 1944, has done the closest we could come to seeing such photographs from a modern camera. He had traveled around pre-communist Russia in the early 1900s photographing his surroundings.

I must stress, these are NOT "colourized" photographs done by modern digital artists. These are three layer composites produced the way they would have been a century ago, the process is very simple however I will not explain this now. This is early colour photography.

The results are stunning.

I must stress that these are NOT colourized photographs.

These photos truly capture something that can otherwise only be captures in paintings of fantasy setting.

Again, *these are not colourizations*

There are some intricate details to be spotted in some of these photographs in relation to our fake history. As much as I would love to draw your attention them, I will save that for another time. For now just admire the photography of the early new world that has been preserved. This is truly beautiful.