Arctic Stories

Evgenia Arbugaeva, a photographer born and brought up in the far northern Siberian port of Tiksi on the Laptev Sea but now resident in London, has an exhibition, Hyperborea - Stories from the Russian Arctic, at the Photographers Gallery (and my first visit to an exhibition since the lockdown). You can read about it in her Arctic Stories podcast at the gallery website, watch an interview with her, or see her feature at National Geographic.

A number of stories, or locations, go together to make up her project.

These first photos are from the town of Dikson, on the shore of the Kara Sea. In its heyday in the 1980s it was called the capital of the Russian Arctic, but since the death of the USSR it's become a virtual ghost town. Arbugaeva describes how she was disappointed with the photos she was taking until one night the northern lights exploded overhead, bathing the deserted buildings in an other-wordly light:

Her visit to the village of Enurmino in Siberia's far east, where the Chukchi inhabitants hunt for walrus and whale, included a two week stay in a wooden hut with a scientist who was studying the walruses. "We were trapped inside for three of those days, careful not to set off a panic among the estimated 100,000 walruses that had hauled out around us, their movements and fighting shaking our hut."

And in the north west, she stayed with Vyacheslav Korotki, the longtime chief of the Khodovarikha Meteorological Station, on an isolated peninsula on the Barents Sea:

[Photos: Evgenia Arbugaeva]

Comments

[MC]

Remarkable photos!