The following interview with photographer Walt Frankhauser is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief of the Prints & Photographs Division.
Back in 1948, the Library of Congress acquired close to 2,000 rare glass-plate negatives created by the Russian photographer Sergei M. Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944). We knew that what appeared to be black-and-white images could be “rendered” in color, because Prokudin-Gorskii captured each scene through blue, green, and red filters. But the available techniques for recovering the color were so costly that, after fifty years, special projects for books and exhibits had produced only a small number of color images available for viewing.
The arrival of digitizing technology inspired the Library’s scan center director, Lynn Brooks, to try again and to go much further! This innovative challenge intrigued Walt Frankhauser, a professional photographer adept at using Photoshop. Walt’s initial group of 122 color renderings went online in 2001. His continued dedication has now resulted in a generous gift of 1,258 more digital color images.
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Helena: How did you become involved with the Prokudin-Gorskii (PG) Collection?
Walt: In 1999, I was asked by the Library to find a way of digitally extracting a color image from one of PG’s plates. After about 24 hours of non-stop activity, a color image was produced with Photoshop. Thus was born a methodology called digichromatography.
After the initial success, it was easy to become addicted to the process. A wide variety of subjects are in the collection: artistic, architectural, industrial, people and animals, nature, and religious, which PG recorded from his travels over a period of about ten years. PG’s plates were made using an additive (RGB) color method first discovered by James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century. At the time we began this project, Photoshop was the only platform that offered a suite of tools needed to process the plates. Given the historical value of the plates, one could make a unique contribution to the body of knowledge from images created over a century ago, when developed in color.
![Miraculous icon of Mother of God-Odigitria in the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin. [Smolensk]. Photo by Serge Mikha lovich Prokudin-Gorski, 1912. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.03982](https://blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/files/2022/08/service-pnp-ppmsc-03900-03982v.jpg)
Walt: From the beginning, registration of the three layers was by far the biggest challenge, for a multitude of reasons. At first, this step was accomplished manually, consuming hours of trial and error. Later versions of Photoshop began offering an algorithm that could automatically align the three images on a glass plate. The result was a sharper color image, and the time required to process an image decreased by 40-50%. I was happy!
After registration, each layer was digitally colored to correspond with the order of PG’s exposures. It remained to “develop” these colors to achieve the proper contrast and color balance. The last step, most time-consuming of all, was image retouching.
Helena: How has your technique changed over the years?
Walt: Digichromatography has been an evolving methodology since its inception. One of the things learned was that many images were capable of significantly higher contrast and color saturation. This was not true globally, and I began selecting various areas of the image which were amenable to improvement. In many cases the result was a more vibrant image with enhanced detail.
Helena: What challenges did you have to overcome?
Walt: Please do not assume that the production of color images was only mechanical. Far from it! All of the plates suffered from one or more of the following defects: low contrast (which hindered registration), very dark areas (hindering the extraction of detail), color casts (a monochrome image), cracks in the plate (broken glass), scratches (from handling over many years), and spotting (from mold). In some cases, there was also emulsion reticulation. Unfortunately, some images simply could not be processed.
Helena: Which images became your favorites?
Walt: The task of identifying my favorites among 1,380 images was daunting. Nonetheless, I put together some criteria which helped me in the selection. These are: superior color rendering, people as subjects, historical interest, visually pleasing (e.g., architecture, symmetry), and photographed near sunrise or sunset.
The Library’s PG project has been the most professionally satisfying of my career. The Library people, active or retired, with whom I have worked over more than twenty years were to a person supportive, knowledgeable and courteous, another dividend from the work.
Learn More:
- Enjoy all of Walt Frankhauser’s color images or the whole Prokudin-Gorskii collection at the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.
- Explore then & now views, new photo identifications, and helpful maps at the website Legacy of S. M. Prokudin-Gorsky. (Vasiliy V. Dryuchin, project leader, 2008-present)
- Review a variety of color production methods, including Walt Frankhauser’s detailed description of digichromatography
- Read about the collection and photographer in: Adamson, Jeremy, and Helena Zinkham. “The Prokudin-Gorskii Legacy: Color Photographs of the Russian Empire, 1905-1915.” Comma 3-4 (2002): 107-144.
Comments (11)
Those are amazing. Interesting and beautiful.
A very impressive body of work.
I salute Walt and his diligence and tenacity in following through on the collection. The scanning of the tri-part glass negatives in high resolution, and the successful, world-grabbing exhibition in 2001 was the result of one of the best inter-departmental efforts of the Library. The Prints & Photographs Division provide an exemplary model of a curatorial area, representing deep, accurate research through to cataloging the images. I salute Helena Zinkham, Phil Michel, and Verna Curtis, and Irene Chambers and Kim Curry. For a complete list, see: https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/credits.html
Walter Frankhauser is my incredibly talented husband who has spent 20 years of his life devoted to developing and utilizing digichromatography in order to restore the Progudin-Gorskii (PG) collection to its original condition. He has been true to the intent of the initial photographer, never deviating from the authentic purpose. Sincere thanks should be extended to the Czar Nicholas VI for wanting to have these photographs made to educate and enlighten his citizens as to the culture and vastness of the Russian Empire. What is presented here by the Library of Congress is a comprehensive collection of history to which many fine people have contributed.
I know Walt and have discussed this process with him in the lovely home that he shares with his wife Susan. He is incredibly gracious in explaining the process of digichromatography to laymen such as myself. My hat is off to him for his great work on this important project.
Glorious! It is wonderful to read of this vast, painstaking project. Many thanks are due to Walter Frankhauser for his hard work and exercise of artistic judgment in creating the colored renditions of the photographs. And thanks to the LOC for recognizing the importance of the collection, and purchasing and preserving the glass plates. I had the pleasure of seeing a small portion of the collection when they were on display at the Russian Museum of Art in Minneapolis. I look forward to looking at Mr. Frankhauser’s renditions.
Thanks to Walter and Helena for the account of that twenty-odd-year ago effort (has it been that long? yikes!) and for Lynn Brooks chiming in with his recollection of the early work on this front. I was a witness off to one side, and it is great to be reminded of these events today. I followed Lynn’s pointer and read thru all the names in the acknowledgements, including that of William Craft Brumfield, a professor at Tulane University, who helped convey the historical context for the photographs. Meanwhile, at the time the work was carried out, James H. Billington was Librarian of Congress. JHB was a scholar who had long specialized in Russian history. Alas, I have forgotten — am I correct to think that the Prokudin-Gorskii documentation struck a special chord for JHB?
Magical! What an amazing collection! Thank you for bringing the past to us in color.
Loved working on this collection with so many wonderful colleagues in P&P and across the Libraray!
I am happy to see the past in colours, like an illustration to “Russia we lost”. If I may compare it, I found a school building my mother studied in when she was a teenager. The building is still there,locked,abandoned for a couple of years.The main entrance is a big iron door with an oval ribbed handle. When you touch it to open you feel the cold ribs. It is like touching the past, so you can’t help thinking that the whole generations of pupils had been opening this door for years, including my mom and the feeling is just the same. Watching these pics I have the same sensation,as if you are touching the ribs of the past.
Having been a close witness to all the work over six years that resulted in the scanning, digichromatography , cataloging, and on-lining of this collection, I would make a couple points to remember:
— an incredible number of coincidences helped forward tnis work in the darkest of its hours;
— Walt Frankhauser was intrigued early, and became passionate and tenacious in his pursuit of his vision of the end goal;
— Six years for the project to come to fruition, then the successful exhibit of a collection, the exhibition, research, study and very life of which …CONTINUES in Eastern Europe, and the area of P-G’s trips.
This is a relatively unusual exhibition in that it CONTINUES and THRIVES two decades after it’s mounting in the Library and Russia.
— It was such a great inter-departmental effort, augmented by goal-oriented contractors.
— So many people involved— Adamson, Zinkham, Michel, Curtis, Frankhauser …. all success-critical.