This book is spectacularly beautiful and provides a look at the lands of the Russian Empire, as photographed by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky in late Imperial Russia and then by William Craft Brumfield from the 1970s to the 2010s. Prokudin-Gorsky, Brumfield argues, sought to unify the empire visually, making it legible and in full color due to his innovative use of three-separation negatives. Securing the future of the empire required more than photography, however, and one of the main aims of the book is to come to terms with what its end meant in terms of the preservation of architecture and cultural heritage more broadly.

Prokudin-Gorsky worked with the Ministry of Transportation, which helps to explain the structure of the collection, as the railroads, like the photographs, sought to tie the empire together more securely. The photographer's own fate, exile to Paris after the Revolution, however, meant that after his death the Library of Congress bought the collection from his heirs there. (In 1910, the Russian government had ignored Prokudin-Gorsky's proposal to buy his collection.) Brumfield worked with the Library of Congress in preparing an exhibit of the collection in 1985 and was commissioned by former Librarian of Congress James Billington to document architecture from the Russian North to Siberia in the 1990s and early 2000s. These parallel projects and biographies form the subject of the first part of the book, while the second presents the photographs from the various regions of the empire.

Prokudin-Gorsky's photography, once published and then digitized by the Library of Congress, attracted a devoted following in Russia. They were often used for purposes of nostalgia, as an example of the “Russia we have lost.” Brumfield pushes back against this framing, arguing that much has survived. His own photography documents the survival of a great many churches, cathedrals, monasteries, and urban ensembles. His photos also show the shift from a decrepit 1990s to a new era where money for preservation has been found. His text notes that some of these large projects are tied to Vladimir Putin's celebration of the Russian, and especially the Romanov, past.

There are times, however, when the focus on what has been saved seems to be out of step with his own photography, as some panoramas show a complete lack of the churches that had been there before 1917. In his 2015 book, Architecture at the End of the Earth: Photographing the Russian North, he had discussed the culpability of local authorities in the destruction of some great examples of architecture. Only a brief discussion of these issues arises in the conclusion to this work.

Still, the book provides a fine introduction to the architectural heritage of the Russian Empire, with sections on the ancient heartland, then in a large circling motion from Smolensk to the Russian North, the Volga, the Urals, Siberia and Central Asia, with a final chapter on the Solovetskii Islands. The photographs of Bukhara and Samarkand, now in Uzbekistan, are particularly spectacular from both photographers, and Brumfield's photos from 1972 capture the monuments before the extensive renovations of later years.

The question of the visual representation of empire has recently attracted a considerable amount of attention from scholars. These photographs focus on the architectural heritage of the different parts of the former Russian Empire, but both the Prokudin-Gorsky and Brumfield collections, the latter of which is in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., include ethnographic materials that would be of interest.

The design of the book is especially beautiful. It is a pleasure to read a well typeset book. Each geographically focused chapter includes a map, but unfortunately some of them have not labeled bodies of water, which can make following the text difficult in places. A useful index will assist those who are interested in specific places.

Scholars of Russian architecture, photography, and culture more broadly will read this book with profit. Hopefully a Russian translation will make this important work accessible to Russian speakers, whose interest in these topics is immense. The care that the Library of Congress has taken in the Prokudin-Gorsky collection shows that cultural heritage need not remain inside the borders of its place of production to be preserved and even cherished.