What’s inter­est­ing about pho­to­graph research is that the “good” pho­tos aren’t always the “best” pho­tos. I’m con­stant­ly search­ing for pic­tures read­ers haven’t seen time and again. I like snap­shots – can­did, unposed images – which is what made the Romanov research so much length­i­er. The fam­i­ly took thou­sands of pic­tures of them­selves doing the most mun­dane things – eat­ing, doing home­work, shov­el­ing snow. They each had their own Brown­ie Box cam­era, even lit­tle Alex­ei, and they snapped along indis­crim­i­nate­ly. The result was thou­sands of pho­tographs, a seem­ing­ly end­less visu­al doc­u­men­tary of their day-to-day lives. I had a hard time mak­ing final choic­es for the book. Often it came down to bud­get. What could we afford? I have to men­tion the gen­eros­i­ty of Yale Uni­ver­si­ty here. Not only do they house a wealth of won­der­ful pho­tographs, but also they are exceed­ing­ly gen­er­ous about shar­ing them. You’ll note that most of the fam­i­ly pho­tos found in the book came from Yale.

Pic­tures of ordi­nary Rus­sians – peas­ants, work­ers, and sol­diers – were far more dif­fi­cult to come by. These were peo­ple liv­ing mar­gin­al­ized lives. Most couldn’t afford to have them­selves pho­tographed, nor would they have con­sid­ered flit­ting away hard-earned mon­ey on such an expense. They cer­tain­ly didn’t own cam­eras, or have the resources to devel­op film. This meant, of course, that they relied on out­side chron­i­clers. So did I. Hap­pi­ly for all of us, Nicholas com­mis­sioned a pho­tog­ra­ph­er named Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii to visu­al­ly doc­u­ment the empire. Pro­dukin-Gorskii trav­eled the length of the coun­try just before World War I, catch­ing on film the ordi­nary lives of ordi­nary Rus­sians. Best of all, he left those pho­tographs – hun­dreds in all – to the Library of Con­gress. They’re heartrend­ing­ly beau­ti­ful. One can’t help but won­der if Nicholas ever saw them. But you can. The Library of Con­gress had dig­i­tized them and made them avail­able online. Go take a look!

I look at pho­tographs in two ways. The first, of course, is with a designer’s eye. How will this par­tic­u­lar pho­to inform my read­er? Can it do ‘dou­ble duty”? That is, can it illus­trate more than one top­ic or theme? How will it look with the oth­er pho­tos? Does it add to the sto­ry? Will it draw young read­ers in? Does it pro­vide an inter­est­ing jux­ta­po­si­tion? Will it pro­vide a sense of visu­al continuity?

The sec­ond way is with a researcher’s eye. I search for details I can use in my nar­ra­tive. I look close­ly at things like wall­pa­per pat­terns, and the lace trim on gowns. I note the back­grounds. Is that a foun­tain? Of what? Is that the moun­tains? Which ones? Often­times I even look with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass. Is that mud on that peas­ant girl’s bare toes? Are the grand duchess­es all wear­ing match­ing, gold bracelets? Ah, there must be a sto­ry behind that! As you can prob­a­bly guess, I exam­ine lots of pho­tographs that I have no inten­tion of includ­ing in the book. But dis­cov­er­ing how things look from these pri­ma­ry sources is essen­tial to telling an engag­ing story.