Set of 10 postcards of Hyperborea by Evgenia Arbugaeva (2020)

Small format set in new condition

17 x 12 cm (7" x 5")

Published by The Photographers' Gallery

About

Hyperborea brings together four ‘chapters’ presenting visual stories of life in the Russian Arctic and continues a fascination with her homeland. The first, Weather Man (2013) documents the life of Slava, a dedicated station-master living in solitude in a remote meteorological post in the far north. In 2018-19, supported by a National Geographic Society Storytelling Fellowship, Arbugaeva returned to the region, travelling to three more outposts in the extreme north of Russia: a lighthouse on the isolated Kanin peninsula populated only by the keepers and their dog; Dikson, a now derelict ghostly town that yielded the tremendous spectacle of the aurora borealis during Arbugaeva’s stay there; and finally the far eastern region of Chukotka, home to the Chukchi community, who still maintain the traditions of their ancestors, living off the land and sea with Walrus and whale meat as the main components of their diet.   

Each group of images reveals both the fragility and resilience of the Arctic land and its inhabitants, illuminating the connections between nature, sky, earth, light and dark and exposing the threats being wrought by environmental change. Her precisely composed, jewel-like images glow with rich other-worldly colour, bristle with the raw electric energy of the climate and show the quiet intensity of lives borne out in solitude and extremes.