In a modest sort of way, we like to think that in hidden europe we are documenting some of our continent's unsung corners. Many have engaged in such endeavours before us, as, from pilgrimages to post-colonial explorations, travellers have sketched out their impressions of the peoples and places they encountered along the way. One man we rather admire for his sharp eye and technical prowess in documenting landscape and culture is a little known Russian traveller and photographer.

One hundred years ago, Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky put to the tsar a proposal to create a photographic inventory of the empire that was Russia.