FROM THE ARCHIVE: Two traders in striped robes and white turbans sit at their stall on the Registan, the great square at the heart of Samarkand, Uzbekistan,...
FROM THE ARCHIVE: Two traders in striped robes and white turbans sit at their stall on the Registan, the great square at the heart of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, around 1910.
The Registan was the commercial and ceremonial center of one of the Silk Road's greatest cities, where caravans from China, Persia and Europe traded silk, spices and carpets for centuries. By the time this photo was taken, Samarkand was part of the Russian Empire, but its bazaar life still ran on the old rhythms: goods weighed, prices haggled, deals sealed over tea.
It is also one of the earliest color photographs ever taken, made with a pioneering three-plate process decades before color film became common.
Photo: Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, Library of Congress, ca. 1910.