Among the primary initiators of Russian development projects in Turkestan was Grand Duke Nicholas Constantinovich (1850–1918), grandson of Nicholas I, who moved in 1881 to Tashkent, which had been taken by Russian forces in 1865. There he sponsored a vast irrigation scheme to make Golodnaia Steppe (“Hungry Steppe,” located in present-day Uzbekistan) a productive area for raising cotton and wheat. Conditions in the region were harsh, but arable land would attract Russian settlers. Shown here are simple stuccoed adobe houses for farm workers, built according to a standard Russian plan, at the settlement of Nikolsk (in present-day Kazakhstan). In the background are the peaks of the Turkestan range. The image is by Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863–1944), who used a special color photography process to create a visual record of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. Some of Prokudin-Gorskii’s photographs date from about 1905, but the bulk of his work is from between 1909 and 1915, when, with the support of Tsar Nicholas II and the Ministry of Transportation, he undertook extended trips through many different parts of the empire. In 1911 his travels took him to an area of Central Asia then known as Turkestan, where he photographed Islamic architectural monuments as well as agricultural scenes.