“I was brought up with stories of Arctic explorers and the idea of brave men who dedicated their lives to studying this uninhabited region. To me, they were like magicians because they had knowledge I didn’t know how to get close to. I went on this quest and didn’t know what to expect. The stations were very new and characterless, with young people working there. It was a completely different generation of people with laptops. This was not what I had had in mind, so I sailed in complete disappointment for two months.”
If the idyll of a seafaring, weather-beaten gentleman was at first hard to find, Arbugaeva’s luck would soon change. When the ship docked at Khodovarikha, an Arctic peninsula in the Barents Sea, Arbugaeva saw a man who fitted the image she had in mind. His name was Vyacheslav Korotki. He had been living on the outpost for 13 years but had sailed on Russian ships for many decades before this. “I got out and saw the lighthouse and station, which were so surreal. The scene looked as though it was from my dreams. The head of the meteorological station – Vyacheslav – with bright blue eyes and a Zen-like nature appeared, and I thought, ‘This is exactly the place; everything – this whole expedition, me going to study photography, my entire life – has led to this encounter.’”
Arbugaeva explains she spent a couple of hours talking with Korotki and, when the time came to leave, vowed she would go back. The trip would prove difficult to organise, however, as there is no transportation to the peninsula. “The only way I could get there was to take a helicopter, which is expensive to hire.” But with help from a grant from Photo de Mer festival in Vannes, France, and support from Leica, which partially funded the project as part of its 100-year celebrations, the trip became a reality.
