just before the photographer arrived for the first Time in the Siberian village, was emerged from the Taiga, a bear between the houses, in the middle of December. “Schatun” are not called animals, if you find in the winter, because they are hurt, or sick, or just too thin. Too hungry. Greedy, the bear tore two dogs. Then the hunter shot him. His paws they kept, they laid them carefully in a basket, to the memory of the Assault, which not only brought terror to the village, but also sadness. “The people,” said the photographer Elena Anosova, “love their dogs like family members.”
Deep in the province of Russia
Anosova, 35, is a city person, grew up in the Siberian metropolis of Irkutsk, and yet the village was already a place of longing, when she was still a child. Because the father, a historian, was raised there, every summer, came the grandparents and the uncle to visit in the city. Traveled from the father to the village, not allowed to Anosova, however: she suffered from an Allergy, and in the Taiga, there were neither Doctors nor medicine. Too remote, too dangerous, decided by the mother. Anosova was long since grown up, as she went for the first Time on the trip to the Relatives in the Taiga.
in fact, the village, visited the photographer for 2015 again and again, deep in the Russian province, surrounded by dense forests. From the Siberian Irkutsk it is the first plane in the small town of Kirensk, from there a helicopter in the surrounding villages is flying twice a month. For nine months, the Winter has the country in its grip, the people drive a car, but a snow mobile. The neighboring village of the village is 300 kilometers far away.
Anosovas ancestors had founded the small town 300 years ago. Much has not changed since then. The nature and the seasons of the year determine the everyday life. “We all know now, what are you doing on each day of this year,” says Anosova. 60 families live in the village, the residents hunt moose, baking bread, planting vegetables, and cooking, picking berries and mushrooms. To earn money on Traps for sable, and sell the skins.
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The Modern is holding a very slow feeder. Electricity only works by the hour, produced by a diesel generator. Ice replace the rest until today the deep freezer. The water comes from holes in the frozen river in January, the temperatures drop to minus 50 degrees. Once a week the villagers to heat the Banja, the wash-house. The old Valeriy washes himself every Morning in the snow. Again and again, Anosova had to ask, until she was allowed to take a photo of him here, finally. The image of his snowy face is Remote, the most famous of Anasovas photo series”,” which was internationally awarded in many cases. The idyllic life is not. Some of the residents would not leave the village, perhaps, but Even if for the homes buyers would, so the money was enough only for a room in the next town. There is hardly any work. Some of them are as trapped in the village, see no Alternative to her hard life as self-catering.
“From the state, no one expected something”
The most, however, the love life be in an Offside position and pull it in the city. “It is restricted, but the people perceive it as free,” explains Anosova. Because you feel independent, self-sufficient. “The political System here is actually no matter,” says the photographer. “From the state, no one expected anything here.” And yet, everything could be worse: it Would close the school, or the infirmary, increased the prices for the helicopter in the city, then thought maybe the villagers no longer in the wasteland, she says. Medications it is still there in the village. If an accident happens, a paramedic fly in by helicopter. Hours can take.
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The 35-year-old photographer Elena Anosova, born in the Siberian town of Irkutsk, studied photography in Moscow. For your Work has a national and international award-awarded
©Elena Anosova
came As a Anosova for the first Time in the village, did not want to photograph you actually, but from a different project to recover; she had just been photographed for three months in women’s prisons. With loneliness and seclusion, she deals in her Work, again and again, because this experience has shaped her own life. As a Teenager, she even had to spend three years in a boarding school to recover from an accident. With horror she recalls the time in the collective, in community dorms, and foreign particular everyday life without privacy. Later she studied in Irkutsk and Moscow Design and photography.
language of the Evenks
Long, it wasn’t until Anosova handle also in the village according to the camera. Of course, in these pictures your family, the question of where their roots lie. But Isolation is all about, here in the village at the end of the world. “Island” is the name of it in the language of the Evenki, a Siberian ethnic group, who lived traditionally in the area.
More does not reveal Anosova. They had to promise their Relatives. They fear that, otherwise, tourists could come by, in the sea of dense forest. And your desert island, you want all to yourself.
