Author(s): Philipp Blom

Art and Photography

"Twilight of the Romanovs" opens a door onto the world of pre-revolutionary Russia in original photographs taken during the last decades of Romanov rule. They include many remarkable colour images created using an early three-colourplate technique; these bring the remote past to life with an especially vivid jolt. We discover a world of exceptional diversity, seemingly timeless, almost archaic, marked by persistent poverty, yet also abundantly rich and often surprisingly modern. These photographs are snapshots of a vanished world. The Russian Empire was soon to be destroyed, and, in the ensuing blood-soaked decades, rendered unrecognizable. Yet these images reveal a surprising continuity: despite the subsequent cataclysm, faces, postures, buildings and landscapes still resonate with those who see them a century and more later.