Prokudin-Gorsky was born in the ancestral estate of Funikova Gora, in the Pokrovsky Uyezd of the Vladimir Governorate (now Kirzhachsky District, Vladimir Oblast). His parents were of the Russian nobility, and the family had a long military history.[3] They moved to Saint Petersburg, where Prokudin-Gorsky enrolled in Saint Petersburg State Institute of Technology to study chemistry under Dmitri Men