The Camera and the Tsars, A Romanov Family Album (2005)

By Charlotte Zeepvat, Sutton Publishing,  242 pages. Softbound, very good.

"The Romanov Dynasty ruled Russia for a little over three hundred years and their story, ending with their tragic deaths, has exerted a lasting fascination." This book contains photos collected over many years, showing the family in both official but mostly informal portraits. The advent pf commercial photography made the images of the Romanovs available to the public for the first time, and now that people saw them more as humans than far away deities. the end of the dynasty may have been inevitable. The last Tsar and his family were avid photographers and continued the hobby into exile. The other members of the extended family continued the hobby, andthe albums range from the 1860s to the 1930s.