For the image I marked as Cliff Villages 1 (excerpted at left), Prokudin-Gorskii had the title, "Dagestan.  Shamil's village."  My original comment on this picture was "I never knew Russia had anything like this.  Very cool.  But who's Shamil?"  

This humble question has been answered more thoroughly than I expected!  It seems Shamil is a figure about whom reasonable people disagree - making him instantly a matter of interest, as far as I'm concerned.  The first information I got back about Shamil came from Paul Gavrilovic, who offered this explanation:

"Shamil refers to the legendary imam who organized a rebellion against imperial Russian forces in the Caucasus. The rebels were primarily Chechen tribes living in the Dagestani uplands--there was no such thing as a Chechen autonomous republic until the '30s. The main source of livelihood for these mouintain tribes was armed robbery, kidnapping and slave trade of kidnapped victims. Understandably this behavior was not appreciated by the neighboring Dagestani tribes and Kazaks (Cossack in English) who appealed for help from the Russian imperial forces."

However, it seems there is another side to this story.  Khalid Baheyeldin wrote in, partially in response to Paul's comments, to say:

"As for Shamil, he was a Daghestani resistance leader against Tsarist Russia's expansion into the Caucaus mountain region. He was not a robber, slave trader, nor a brigand (as Paul Gavrilovic mistakenly says), but more of a resistance leader / freedom fighter. Of course, Russians would want to think otherwise. Even the modern Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev is named after the older Shamil!"  

Khalid also included links to these two sites, which have between them a tremendous amount of additional information.  (Links open in new windows.)

Khalid's take was seconded by a reader named Marek Twardowski, although I managed to mislay this person's email for over a year and completely forgot about it.  My apologies.  Marek's history was in Khalid's vein, although he added an interesting tidbit about the Poles (!): 

"Shamil was a Chechen leader. I am not an expert on history of Caucasus, but I think that your description of XIXth century Chechens comes from Russian propaganda. They were simply fighting for freedom, stubbornly, throughout XIXth century. Russians had much trouble with them. Shamil was their leader and his body guards were Polish - he considered them most trustworthy. At that time Poland was partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austro-Hungary and many Polish people fought abroad against those countries, no matter where."

Marek also disagreed with Paul's characterizations of the Kazakhs: "Kazakh does not mean Cossack. The Kazakhs are an Asian tribe (from Kazakhstan, NE of Caspian Sea), while Cossacs come generally from Ukraine."

As I'm far from being a scholar of Asian history, I'll refrain from expressing a preference of either view; perhaps at some future point I'll inform myself enough to think I'm qualified to have an opinion.  For now I'll simply include both takes on the matter and hopefully there are those who will find it all to be interesting.  Of course, my thanks go out to everyone who's sent me information of any kind.

"Enjoyed seeing your website as I've always had the same fascination with these works. Of course, you're involved with the digital side that's been instituted since 2001. Did you know the LOC put on an exhibit back around 1988 or thereabouts? I saw the exhibit - roughly a couple hundred images though my memory could be faulty -a lot but not enough for me. These were printed using a color printing method once common but obsolete since the early 1950s (the carbro method?). LOC tried some printers but found the initial work lacking quality. One of the guys in the photo division explained to me that LOC located a couple of older retired guys familiar with the process - I think they were then living in Baltimore. Their work was stunning. An earlier book of color prints had already appeared, and National Geographic had used one image of Tolstoy too. None of that compares with the clarity, grainlessness, and shockingly real color achieved by the two retired printers. A good friend of mine worked in the LOC European Reading Division (He's still there) who was a Russian language expert told me of a visit by high Soviets and the presentation of an album of these works and how pleased and astonished they were.  [...]

Here's the LOC's own reference to the 1980s exhibit.  Although the site notes that reproductions are NOT available, they certainly were at the time of the '80s exhibit; I own three slides ordered at the time, and some postcard images sold in conjunction with the exhibit, which was staged on the ground floor near the area that is now the gift shop in the Jefferson Building.

I found your site on Google, looking for information on creating color photographs from a single B&W negative. I saw the process demonstrated while in college in 1974. The concept still fascinates me. 

If you need more details about the '80s work, I could probably steer you to some people at LOC with first-hand knowledge of it. It's a neat technological story quite apart from the recent digital interest.  Actually, it's more interesting to me than the digital magic because of the age of the technology and the skill required. I think the images the retired photo printers made might have been dye transfers. I'm informed Kodak ceased production of dye transfer materials and chemicals in 1993, so the prints at the LOC (stored in their collections) may be the last ones possible. I just don't know."

Thanks again, John!  As this update goes to press I am only now getting around to emailing John's contacts; no doubt they can shed further light on this fascinating story.

Who knew a little remark about a railway bridge feature would inspire more email than I've ever received about anything posted on Ummagurau.com?  Not me.

Faced with the image I marked as Railroad 1 (excerpted at left), I commented, "My father suggests that the big triangular things act to protect the bridge supports from ice during the winter; I don't fully understand this, but okay."  I probably should have just listened to my dad and let it go, but my skepticism here apparently inspired a number of generous people to provide me with detailed explanations of these triangle things and what they're for.  

Here's what I've learned.  My dad was more or less correct, but there were a number of subtleties and additional purposes of which I was unaware.  Here's a quick summary of what I've learned.  The triangle things (I still don't really know what they're called, if they have a name) do seem to primarily be used for protecting the bridge from ice.  I had assumed my father meant the effects of the river freezing up around the bridge, but it looks like the idea is that chunks of ice coming down the river will be deflected by the triangles so they don't smash into the bridge's brittle, toothpick-like wood supports.  This explanation was brought up by virtually all of my informants, with Brenden Morgenthaler getting special bonus credit for being the first to let me know.  

That said, it is in theory possible to use triangles of a similar sort to protect against ice forming around the pillars, as I originally thought.  Franklin Eekhout explains: 

"These triangular structures in the water could be mini icebreakers, as in an icebreaking ship's hull, turned upside down. You should see similar structures in other cold weather bridge structures. Usually it's just a cone shaped thing. I remember seeing an article about a concrete bridge in Alaske/Japan/Russia that was especially designed with a similar ice breaking form, as ice was a major problem there.  

The theory, and it seems to work in practice too (!), is that ice expands and exerts pressure against the pillars. Putting a triangular shape in the water forces the ice sheet upwards and also breaks it, sparing the structure behind it."

But, as Franklin pointed out, this bridge features the triangles only on one side.  So their role has to do with the direction of the river - so the "ice floating downstream" theory still holds.  Or perhaps it should be "stuff floating downstream," as things other than ice were suggested: Franklin brought up the possibility of shipping lumber downstream, and one Jenna Klopovic asserted that the triangles could be "to guide boats through the spaces so that the structure can't be rammed into."  Felix Finch seconded the boat point, and also added that "You can see the same idea under almost any bridge with piers in the water, unless the river is so puny that not much can get in it. I don't know why some are longer than others."  Franklin suggested tentatively that the bigger triangles are in faster, deeper water.  This makes sense to me.

So now, if I ever need to build a bridge in any icy, boat-friendly, or lumber-shipping clime, I'll know just what to do...and why!  My thanks go out to everybody who sent in information on this topic.