Wait, I know what you’re going to say: it’s spring already and you’re not so much in the mood for photos from the Arctic. But these are not just any photos, they are a magical portrayal a photographer made when she returned to the place where she grew up and which she missed.
Evgenia Arbugaeva lived in Tiksi, this tiny Arctic town. She started the project out of a simple need to go back and see the place she loved and left behind as a kid. The reality of life there is far from idyllic. As Arbugaeva says (see the interview below), Tiksi is almost abandoned, houses are empty, there used to be 12.000 inhabitants but now there are only 4000 left. But she chooses to look at this place with innocent eyes, to see the magic of the snow, the lights and the simple life. Seen through this lens, the place is magic and feels so easy to understand why she missed it when she was a child. It’s because children find beauty in simple things. And see magic.
Here’s an interview with Arbugaeva in GUP Magazine.
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All images © Evgenia Arbugaeva
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