Hi Rich
It’s my impression that Prokudin-Gorsky for his time was a rather sober photographer, not heavily staging and romanticizing as some earlier photographers, to me it looks like he was simply trying to make a record of the different cultures of the Russian empire. But his photos are of course not photojournalism as we would see its today, and the photos are staged in the sense that his technique with 3 different glass plates for each photo (producing the fantastic colors) required his subjects to stand still for a rather long time.
If he was hijacked by the Tekke marketing department I would suspect he could have done it a bit better giving us a clear view of the Ensi. That is to say if he wasn’t a 100 years before his time and into comercial discrete and advanced subliminal product-placement. Well perhaps he were, at least I am always cross-checking with his photo when I see a 3-column Tekke Ensi. It would be great fun if one could find the exact match on ebay
. Until now I have found these, of course no exact match - yet:
And Steve, I just took the measurements of the Germech in photoshop, if the width is 86 cm then I get the height including fringes to 62 cm, just a bit more than 2 feet (and not less, sorry). But of course no way of knowing if they have been longer originally.
Best
Martin