Image: Mohammed Alim Khan cropped

Description: A picture of Alim Khan (1880-1944), Emir of Bukhara, taken in 1911. This is one of the earliest color photographs in existence and was originally taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii as part of his work to document the Russian Empire. It was taken using three black-and-white exposures, with red, green and blue filters respectively, long before color photographic printing existed. The three resulting images were projected using color filters to create a color projection. More recently, the Library of Congress has scanned Prokudin-Gorskii's work and contracted with other firms to produce high-resolution color images from the black and white scans.
Usage Terms: Public domain