I am looking at a century-old photograph by Prokudin-Gorskii which depicts villagers, in what appears to be a mountainous Russian town, shoveling something into the backs of their horse-drawn carriages. Each of the two carriages in the photo are pulled by only one horse apiece, perhaps all the villagers could afford. An elderly woman sits atop her carriage in the foreground while a man donning a gray hat has his shovel plunged in something brown behind her, ready to fill the carriage. The gray hat is in style, perhaps a gift from a Siberian relative who came to visit months ago. A teenaged girl sits on the ground beside the old woman's carriage with a basket in front of her, not caring that her clothes are dusted with earth.
In the background stands another person weilding a shovel but the blurriness in his/her face makes his/her gender indistiguishable.
All four people are looking directly at the camera. This might be the first time one has ever come into their presence and it makes them a bit nervous and a bit mesmerized at the same time. They are on the cusp of a technological breakthrough. They are photogenic peasants.
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