Evgenia Arbugaeva (born 1985) is a photographer of the

Russian Arctic The Extreme North or the Far North is a large part of Russia located mainly north of the Arctic Circle and boasting enormous mineral and natural resources. Its total area is about , comprising about one-third of Russia's total area. Formall ...

. She grew up in

Yakutsk Yakutsk ( ) is the capital and largest city of Sakha, Russia, located about 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 ...

and several of her photographic projects have involved people living in that area. ''

National Geographic ''National Geographic'' (formerly ''The National Geographic Magazine'', sometimes branded as ''Nat Geo'') is an American monthly magazine published by National Geographic Partners. The magazine was founded in 1888 as a scholarly journal, nine ...

'' has funded her to photograph the people and economic changes on Russia's northern coast.

Early life and education

Arbugaeva was born in

Tiksi Tiksi ( rus, Ти́кси, , ˈtʲiksʲɪ; , ''Tiksii'' – lit. ''a moorage place'') is an urban locality (an urban-type settlement) and the administrative center of Bulunsky District in the Sakha Republic, Russia, located on the shore of the B ...

, a small port town of the

Sakha Republic Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia, and the largest federal subject of Russia by area. It is located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean, with a population of one million ...

on the

Arctic Sea The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five oceanic divisions. It spans an area of approximately and is the coldest of the world's oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, a ...

near the mouth of the

Lena River The Lena is a river in the Russian Far East and is the easternmost river of the three great rivers of Siberia which flow into the Arctic Ocean, the others being Ob (river), Ob and Yenisey. The Lena River is long and has a capacious drainage basi ...

. One of her childhood heroes was explorer

Jacques Cousteau Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (, also , ; 11 June 191025 June 1997) was a French naval officer, oceanographer, filmmaker and author. He co-invented the first successful open-circuit self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (SCUBA), called the ...

. At the age of eight, she and her family moved to

. She studied management in

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

before moving to

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. There, she studied photography at the

International Center of Photography The International Center of Photography (ICP) is a photography museum and school at 84 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. ICP's photographic collection, reading room, and archives are at Mana Contemporary in Jer ...

, graduating in 2009. 19 years after moving from her hometown, Arbugaeva moved back to

Photography

Arbugaeva's photographic method involves living with her subjects long enough to become friends with them so they relax in front of her camera. For one of her projects, she traveled with

Siberian Siberia ( ; , ) is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed a part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its predecessor states si ...

hunters for the

tusk Tusks are elongated, continuously growing front teeth that protrude well beyond the mouth of certain mammal species. They are most commonly canine tooth, canine teeth, as with Narwhal, narwhals, chevrotains, musk deer, water deer, muntjac, pigs, ...

s of

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus.'' They lived from the late Miocene epoch (from around 6.2 million years ago) into the Holocene until about 4,000 years ago, with mammoth species at various times inhabi ...

s, newly exposed by

global warming Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes ...

; she won the trust of the hunters by stitching up the injured hand of the head of the group. She often works without a camera, scouting locations that she returns to frequently until the lighting and inspiration combine for a photo. In 2010, when Arbugaeva returned to Tiksi, then becoming a ghost town, she photographed 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. Despite the decline of the town and the difficulty of 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." 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 journey on an icebreaker to 22 of the stations, including the station at Khodovarikha, where she met at took a portrait of meteorologist Vyacheslav Korotki. In early 2014, she returned to Khodovarikha by helicopter for a two-and-a-half-week visit and photography session with Korotki. Based on this work, a much darker series of photos than the ones from Tiksi, she published a profile of Korotki in ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...

''. Arbugaeva's other projects have included photographing nomadic

Yakut Yakut or Yakutian may refer to: * Yakuts, the Turkic peoples indigenous to the Sakha Republic * Yakut language, a Turkic language * Yakut scripts, Scripts used to write the Yakut language * Yakut (name) * Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic ...

reindeer herders Reindeer herding is when reindeer are herded by people in a limited area. Currently, reindeer are the only semi-domesticated animal which naturally belong to the North. Reindeer herding is conducted in nine countries: Norway, Finland, Sweden, Russ ...

in Sakha and "Amani", a sequence of fictionalized images set on an abandoned anthropological research station on a former German coffee plantation in

Tanzania Tanzania, officially the United Republic of Tanzania, is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It is bordered by Uganda to the northwest; Kenya to the northeast; the Indian Ocean to the east; Mozambique and Malawi to t ...

Recognition

Arbugaeva was the 2013 winner of the

Leica Oskar Barnack Award 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 an ...

for her work in Tiksi, for which she also received a Magnum Emergency Fund in 2012. In 2018, ''

'' 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. In 2022, her short documentary film '' Haulout'', made with her brother Maxim Arbugaev, was featured by ''

''. It won Best Short Documentary award at the

IDA Documentary Awards International Documentary Association (IDA), founded in 1982, is a non-profit 501(c)(3) that promotes nonfiction filmmakers, and is dedicated to increasing public awareness for the documentary genre. Their major program areas are: Advocacy, Film ...

, and was nominated for the

Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film This is a list of films by year that have received an Academy Award together with the other nominations for best documentary short film. Following the Academy's practice, the year listed for each film is the year of release: the awards are announ ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Arbugaeva, Evgenia 1985 births Living people The New Yorker people 21st-century Russian photographers Russian women photographers People from Bulunski District Yakut people Yakut women 21st-century women photographers 21st-century Russian women