Prokudin-Gorskii

This is going to blow your mind.

Question: When was this photo, one of my favorite pictures, taken? Answer: Around 1910.

Wiki Commons has a gallery of high-resolution pictures of the pioneering, color photographs of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, who used his own technique for producing color prints to document the Russian Empire from about 1909 to 1915.

I'll bet you didn't even know there was such a thing as color photography at that time. Well, Prokudin-Gorskii wasn't the first to invent a color process, but some of his pictures are simply magnificent. The Library of Congress has been restoring/reprinting them.

Also, be sure to read the Wikipedia article on Prokudin-Gorskii, which will perhaps lead you to further information on the development (no pun intended) of color film and the art of photography.