The town of Tobolsk served as the military, administrative, and political center of Russian rule in Siberia. Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky [Public domain], Wikimedia Commons Russian chemist and photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii was one of the first to use color photography in the early 20th century in Russia.

In 1907, the photographer decided to systematically document the Russian Empire, and he was given a specially equipped railroad car darkroom by Tsar Nicholas II for the project.

To create his images, he used an oblong glass plate through three different color filters of red, green, and blue, projecting them in slides on top of one another to create a full color image.

Today more than 2,000 of his images are preserved by the Library of Congress. We have put together a collection of some of his most striking images.