Prokudin-Gorsky's Early Life Little is known about first 30 years of life of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, much of the information that you can find today is rather controversial, and many details have been lost in time.
Prokudin-Gorsky was born in 1863 to a noble family from Murom in the Vladimir region, one of the cradles of old Russian architecture and culture (see our
Golden Ring post that features Vladimir). As an adolescent, he was taken to St. Petersburg to continue his education.
During his student years, Prokudin-Gorsky visited classes on painting at
the Imperial Academy of Arts, science lectures at the St. Petersburg State University and, possibly, studied chemistry under the guidance of famous scientist Dmitri Mendeleev. Prokudin-Gorsky did not graduate from the university, instead, he started visiting lectures at the Military Medical Academy, which he did not finish either.