[6] Since that time Brumfield has been actively engaged in the study of Prokudin-Gorsky's photographs, including several publications for the site "Russia Beyond the Headlines".

[7] Brumfield lived in the former Soviet Union and Russia for a total of fifteen years,[8] doing postgraduate research with Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University,[8] but mostly travelling through the northern country, surveying and photographing the surviving relics of vernacular architecture.

[3] In a 2005 interview Brumfield, asked to tell which of those journeys stood out, picked a photo survey of Varzuga, a remote village connected to civilization by 150 kilometers of a sandy clay track.

The William C. Brumfield Collection at the National Gallery of Art consists of 12,500 black-and-white 8" x 10" photographic prints, 40,000 negatives and over 89,000 digital files, most of which are in color (nearly 149,000 in total).

"[14][15] In 2019 Brumfield was awarded the Order of Friendship, “for the merits in strengthening friendship and cooperation between peoples, fruitful activities for the rapprochement and mutual enrichment of cultures of nations and nationalities.”[16][17] [18] In 2021 Brumfield launched a virtual exhibition entitled "Lost America," which is based on photography done in the United States primarily in the 1970s.

The exhibit consisted of several rooms devoted to Brumfield's photographic work in the historic Russian north (the region around the White Sea).