Evgenia Arbugaeva

Last updated

Evgenia Arbugaeva
Born1985 (age 38–39)
Tiksi, Yakut ASSR, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union
NationalityRussian
OccupationPhotographer
Known forPhotography of the Russian Arctic

Evgenia Arbugaeva (born 1985) is a photographer of the Russian Arctic. [1] Having grown up in Yakutsk, she has an empathy with the people living in the far north and the difficult living conditions they experience, and several of her photographic projects have involved them. National Geographic has funded her to photograph the people and economic changes on Russia's northern coast.

Contents

Early life and education

Arbugaeva was born in Tiksi, [2] [3] a small port town of the Sakha Republic on the Arctic Sea, near the mouth of the Lena River. As part of the Soviet Union, Tiksi supported military airfields and became the world's most northern settlement with over 5000 people. [4] Her memories of the place include pink mountains, whiteout snowstorms in which she lost all sense of place, fields of snow colored green or gold by the surrounding light, and auroras in the endless night of winter. [3] [5] One of her childhood heroes was explorer Jacques Cousteau. [6] At the age of eight, and at the fall of the Soviet Union, she and her family moved to Yakutsk, "the coldest city on earth" and a place that she found much less visually appealing. [2] [3] She studied management in Moscow before moving to New York City. There, she studied photography at the International Center of Photography, graduating in 2009. [3] [7] 19 years after moving from her hometown, Arbugaeva decided to move back to Tiksi because she could no longer remember anything from the town. These memories had faded so much to the point where they seemed unreal.

Photography

Arbugaeva's photographic method involves living with her subjects on a long enough term to become friends with them and for them to relax in front of her camera. [1] [6] For instance, in one of her projects she traveled with Siberian hunters for the tusks of mammoths, newly exposed by global warming. She won the trust of the hunters by stitching up the injured hand of the head of the group. [6] She often works without a camera, scouting locations that she returns to frequently until the lighting and inspiration combine to give her a photo. [2]

In 2010 Arbugaeva returned to Tiksi, now becoming a ghost town, on a personal visit to compare it to her memories, but left the town with only one photo she liked, of a teenage girl playing on the seashore. Inspired by the photo, she traveled back to Tiksi in 2011 to meet the girl and her family and to document their daily life, overlain with her own memories. [1] [2] [3] [5] [8] Despite the decline of the town and the difficult life there (which drove her host family to plan their own departure), her photos in this project are "bright and whimsical, their compositions and vivid colours redolent of the books she read there as a child". [8]

Arbugaeva learned of the weather stations of northern Russia in a dog sledding incident, when she and her father had to take shelter from bad weather at one of the stations. In her project "Weather Man", she took a two-month passage on an icebreaker to 22 of the stations, including the station at Khodovarikha, where she met meteorologist Vyacheslav (Slava) Korotki. The portrait taken of Vyacheslav Korotki is an intimate story of an individualistic man, who is facing the fading winter of the Arctic. In early 2014, she returned to Khodovarikha by helicopter for a two-and-a-half-week visit and photography session with Korotki. [1] [7] [8] Based on this work, a much darker series of photos than the ones from Tiksi, [8] she published a profile of Korotki in The New Yorker . [9]

Arbugaeva's other photography projects have included nomadic Yakut reindeer herders in Sakha, [5] and "Amani", a sequence of fictionalized images set on an abandoned anthropological research station on a former German coffee plantation in Tanzania. [1]

Recognition

Arbugaeva is the 2013 winner of Leica's Oskar Barnack Award for her work in Tiksi, [2] for which she also received a Magnum Foundation International Emergency Fund grant in 2012. [3] [5] In 2018, National Geographic named her as one of their four inaugural Media Innovation Fellows, funding her to photograph the people and economic changes on Russia's northern coast. [10]

In 2022, her film Haulout with her brother Maxim Arbugaev, about walruses, was featured by The New Yorker . It won Best Short Documentary award at the IDA Documentary Awards, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film. [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yakutsk</span> City under republican jurisdiction in Sakha Republic, Russia

Yakutsk is the capital city of Sakha, Russia, located about 450 km (280 mi) south of the Arctic Circle. Fueled by the mining industry, Yakutsk has become one of Russia's most rapidly growing regional cities, with a population of 355,443 at the 2021 Census.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sakha Republic</span> First-level administrative division of Russia

Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), is the largest republic of Russia, located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean, with a population of one million. Sakha comprises half of the area of its governing Far Eastern Federal District, and is the world's largest country subdivision, covering over 3,083,523 square kilometers (1,190,555 sq mi). Yakutsk, which is the world's coldest major city, is its capital and largest city.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verkhoyansk</span> Town in Sakha Republic, Russia

Verkhoyansk is a town in Verkhoyansky District of the Sakha Republic, Russia, located on the Yana River in the Arctic Circle, 92 kilometers (57 mi) from Batagay, the administrative center of the district, and 675 kilometers (419 mi) north of Yakutsk, the capital of the Sakha republic. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 1,311. Verkhoyansk holds the record for the hottest temperature ever recorded north of the Arctic Circle, with 38.0 °C (100.4 °F), and it also holds the record for the coldest temperature ever recorded in Asia, −67.8 °C (−90.0 °F). The cold record is shared with Oymyakon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laptev Sea</span> Marginal sea in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia between the Kara Sea and the East Siberian Sea

The Laptev Sea is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the northern coast of Siberia, the Taimyr Peninsula, Severnaya Zemlya and the New Siberian Islands. Its northern boundary passes from the Arctic Cape to a point with co-ordinates of 79°N and 139°E, and ends at the Anisiy Cape. The Kara Sea lies to the west, the East Siberian Sea to the east.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tiksi</span> Urban-type settlement in Sakha Republic, Russia

Tiksi is an urban locality and the administrative center of Bulunsky District in the Sakha Republic, Russia, located on the shore of the Buor-Khaya Gulf of the Laptev Sea, southeast of the delta of the Lena River. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 5,063.

<i>Taymyr</i> (1909 icebreaker) Steam-powered icebreaker

Taymyr was an icebreaking steamer of 1,200 tons built for the Russian Imperial Navy at Saint Petersburg in 1909. It was named after the Taymyr Peninsula.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nordvik Bay</span>

Nordvik Bay is a gulf in the Laptev Sea in the north of Russia. Lat 73° 45' and long 112°.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Muostakh Island</span>

Muostakh Island, also spelled "Mostakh", is an island in the Buor-Khaya Gulf of the Laptev Sea. It is located off the eastern side of the Lena delta, enclosing the Tiksi Bay, about 35 km ESE of Tiksi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Makar Island</span>

Makar Island is an island in the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), Russian Federation. It is part of the Yana Bay of the Laptev Sea.

Claudine Doury is a French photographer living in Paris. She has been a member of Agence Vu since 1991. In 1999, she received the Leica Oskar Barnack award as well as a World Press Photo award for her work on the "Peoples of Siberia", and the Niépce Prize in 2004. Her Siberian work has been shown in a solo exhibition at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

James Whitlow Delano is an American reportage photographer based in Tokyo, Japan. He has published several books of photography and is known for black and white long term projects based on human rights, the environment and culture. Delano's work, mainly from Asia and Latin America, has received many honors internationally including the Alfred Eisenstadt Award, from Picture of the Year International, National Press Photographers Association (N.P.P.A.), Leica’s Oskar Barnack award, PX3, Photo District News, American Photography, Communication Arts and others. His photographs have shown in galleries and museums on five continents and are held in the permanent collections of La Triennale Museum of Art, and the Museo Fotografia Contemporanea both in Milan (Italy) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jane Evelyn Atwood</span> American photographer

Jane Evelyn Atwood is an American photographer, who has been living in Paris since 1971. Working primarily with documentary photography, Atwood typically follows groups of people or individuals, focusing mostly on people who are on the fringes of society. Atwood has had ten books of her work published, and received the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, the Grand Prix Paris Match for Photojournalism, the Oskar Barnack Award, the Alfred Eisenstadt Award and the Hasselblad Foundation Grant twice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sangar, Sakha Republic</span> Urban-type settlement in Sakha Republic, Russia

Sangar is an urban locality and the administrative center of Kobyaysky District of the Sakha Republic, Russia. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 4,377.

Davide Monteleone is an Italian photographer. He won World Press Photo awards in 2007, 2009, and 2011. Since 2019 Monteleone is a National Geographic Storytelling Fellow.

The Leica Oskar Barnack Award, presented almost continuously since 1979, recognizes photography expressing the relationship between man and the environment. It was known as the Oskar Barnack Award when presented by World Press Photo between 1979 and 1992, and has been known as the Leica Oskar Barnack Award while presented by Leica Camera since 1995.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Pinckers</span> Belgian photographer (born 1988)

Max Pinckers (1988) is a Belgian photographer based in Brussels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bogdan Bulychev</span> Russian journalist (born 1984)

Bogdan Yuryevich Bulychev is a Russian explorer, journalist and video blogger. He is known as the expeditions center RGOexpo manager, expeditions and travel projects organizer, the chief editor and the founder of #NEW JET magazine, the founder of #NEW JET group agency. Also he is the member of the Russian Geographical Society, the Association of Polar Explorers and Yaroslavl Oblast Coordination Council on Tourism Development; he is the candidate to become Master of Sports of Russia in Greco-Roman wrestling.

Nanna Heitmann is a German-Russian documentary photographer, currently living in Moscow. She joined Magnum Photos as a nominee in 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sardana Avksentyeva</span> Russian politician

Sardana Vladimirovna Avksentyeva is a Russian politician, who served as the mayor of Yakutsk, the capital of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) from 2018 to 2021.

<i>Haulout</i> (film) 2022 short documentary film

Haulout is a 2022 Russian-British co-production short documentary film written, directed and produced by brother and sister duo Maxim Arbugaev, Evgenia Arbugaeva.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Spicer, Emily (20 July 2017), "Evgenia Arbugaeva: 'I'm always making up stories and believing in magic'", Studio International
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Winner 2013: Evgenia Arbugaeva, Oskar Barnack Award, 2013, retrieved 2018-09-05. See also Interview Evgenia Arbugaeva, Oskar Barnack Award, 2013, retrieved 2018-09-05
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Estrin, James (7 February 2012), "Siberian Memories, Warm and Real", Lens: Photography, Video, and Visual Journalism, The New York Times
  4. ↑ Hydrometeorological Observatory of Tiksi, Russia, Earth System Research Laboratories , retrieved 2018-09-06
  5. 1 2 3 4 Mateo, Ferran (9 March 2012), "The distant latitudes of childhood", Russia Beyond
  6. 1 2 3 Harlan, Becky (3 March 2016), "The Wild Whimsy of the Arctic", National Geographic , archived from the original on 2018-03-19
  7. 1 2 Padley, Gemma (16 June 2015), "Evgenia Arbugaeva took an icebreaker through the Arctic Ocean", British Journal of Photography
  8. 1 2 3 4 Bowcock, Simon (26 October 2015), "Slava of the Arctic: the extreme weatherman living in a timewarp", The Guardian
  9. ↑ Arbugaeva, Evgenia (15 December 2014), "Weather Man", Portfolio, The New Yorker
  10. ↑ "Four Visionary Storytellers Selected as First Class of National Geographic Media Innovation Fellows", National Geographic , 4 June 2018, archived from the original on 2018-09-06
  11. ↑ "Five New Yorker films receive 2023 Academy Award nominations", The New Yorker, 24 January 2023


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.