Dec 30, 2013
[The only known color photograph of the writer Leo Tolstoy. Taken by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky in May 1908, at Tolstoy's Yasnaya Polyana estate]
I'm a bit obsessed with this photograph. Looking at it, it's so palpable how a photograph can demystify all kinds of godly and glorious stuff. Tolstoy is this big and proud myth of a man, someone whose aura has expanded so wide by now, you can’t really imagine him in a body anymore. And suddenly he's sitting there in a denim shirt and grumpy face, causing a considerable earthquake in that visual reference drawer in my brain.
Anyone have a photo of da Vinci in pyjamas? or maybe Napoleon in a swimsuit?