From the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, advertising posters began to quickly gain popularity in the Russian Empire. Artists often depicted scenes from fairy tales. The first advertising posters used the element of hyperbole, exaggerating the properties of the advertised product.

Despite the fact that there was significant economic growth in the Russian Empire at that time, it did not cause an increase in the purchasing power of the majority of the population (peasants). Most of the advertising targeted the rapidly emerging Russian bourgeoisie. Source.

Perfumes of Russian boyars.

pre-revolutionary advertising posters

Tags: posters · Russian Empire

Carl Oswald Bulla or Karl Karlovich Bulla (1855-1929), a portraitist and master of documentary photography, was the owner of a photo studio in St. Petersburg. He became known as “the father of Russian photo reporting.”

In 1886, he received from the Ministry of Internal Affairs “permission to carry out all kinds of photographic work outside his home, such as: on the streets, apartments and in the vicinity of St. Petersburg.” In 1897, Karl Bulla’s photographs began to be published in the popular magazine “Niva”. Since that time, his name became known throughout the Russian Empire.

In total, his legacy is about 230 thousand photographs of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Tsarskoselsky (Vitebsky) railway station in St. Petersburg.

unique photos of the Russian Empire

Tags: Russian Empire · Saint Petersburg city

The following photos were taken by an unknown person belonging to the so-called Czechoslovak Legion, which stuck in Russia after the revolutionary events of 1917 and played an important role during the Russian Civil War. Source: humus

1. Small person guiding a blind one

Russians just a hundred years ago

Tags: Russian Empire

This album of projects of urban and rural buildings of the Russian Empire was compiled by the engineer-architect V.G.Zalessky with the participation of a number of other engineers and architects in 1881 – a very interesting document of its time with beautiful illustrations. Source: humus.

architecture of the Russian Empire

Tags: Russian Empire

The second set of photos of common people taken by William Carrick (1827-1878), a Scottish-Russian artist and photographer, in the Russian Empire. The first part. Source: humus.

1. Orthodox priest.

Russians of the past

Tags: Russian Empire

William Carrick (1827-1878) was a Scottish-Russian artist and photographer. In 1859, in St. Petersburg, he opened the first photo studio in the Russian Empire.

Carrick quickly gained fame, capturing the daily life of the country and became the first Russian ethnographer-photographer. Let’s look at some of his works. The second part. Source: humus.

Musician playing a balalaika.

faces of the Russian Empire

Tags: Russian Empire

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (1832-1898) was one of the greatest Russian landscape painters, who created very photorealistic pictures.

In his paintings he depicted the nature of the middle part of the East European Plain also known as Russian Plain, one of the largest plains in the world.

Rye (1878).

beautiful pictures of Russian nature

Tags: Russian Empire

In 1913, on the wave of the general rise of the Russian economy, the rapid growth of the cinematographic industry began in the Russian Empire. In 1913, according to incomplete data, there were 1,412 movie theaters in the country, of which 134 – in St. Petersburg and 67 – in Moscow.

The heyday of the artistic Russian cinematography occurred during the First World War. In 1916, at least 150 million tickets to movie theaters were sold in the Russian Empire. Let’s look at the movie posters of these times. Source: humus.

1. Train of Horrors (1910s).

great vintage movie posters

Tags: posters · Russian Empire

Today, Vytegra is a small town (since 1773) with a population of about 10,000 people standing on the banks of the Vytegra River, 337 km north-west of Vologda, in the Vologda region.

You can see how this place looked like 108 years ago, in 1909. It is possible due to unique color photographs made by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. Source.

General view of Vytegra and the Vytegra River.

back to the past

Tags: Russian Empire · Vologda oblast

Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky (1863-1944) was a Russian photographer, chemist, and inventor, who made a significant contribution to the development of photography and cinematography and was a pioneer of color photography in Russia.

In 1909-1916, Prokudin-Gorsky traveled a large part of the Russian Empire, photographing ancient churches, monasteries, factories, towns, villages, and a variety of domestic scenes.

The town of Zubtsova on the Volga River (1910).

back to the past

Tags: Russian Empire