Evgenia Arbugaeva

Meteorologist Slava

Evgenia Arbugaeva

I was born and spent my childhood in a small town Tiksi, an outpost of progress and a scientific station, on the shore of the Arctic Ocean in Russia. At the dusk of the USSR, Tiksi was an important military base and home to soldiers, sailors of the Northwest Passage, and to scientists – all of them were building the ‘bright future’ of the North. In my dreams, I sometimes go back to the never-ending tundra of Tiksi, feel the winds so strong that it seems like they can lift me up and take me to far places, or look at the Aurora Borealis that was lighting my way to school during the dark polar night.

One of my most vivid memories is of the times when together with my father I went to visit the scientific station outside of town. The station looked like a settlement on another planet, houses with huge spheres on the roof and all the strange gadgets inside were fascinating. There I met kind meteorologists with long beards who treated us with rhododendron tea and cloudberry jam, telling stories about how the Aurora forms and showing me the atlas of the clouds with beautiful illustrations. These polar explorers were true romantics of the North and my childhood heroes.

Arbugaeva A Home for Science, Social Studies of Science 46(6)

Having these memories in mind, and having recently finished a long-term photographic project on Tiksi, I went on a trip on board the icebreaker Mikhail Somov in the summer of 2013. Once a year, this ship delivers supplies and food to hard-to-reach meteorological stations in the Arctic. I visited 20 stations during a journey of two months. To my surprise, I found most of the stations being renovated into modern facilities, with computers and satellite phones, which lacked character. The new meteorologists turned out to be mostly young and seemed to have come to the Arctic with the sole goal of making money.

And so I sailed in disappointment until we reached the peninsula of Russkiy Zavorot in the Barents Sea. There I met Slava – chief of Hodovarikha meteorological station. Before we even spoke I realized that it was he for whom I was looking. I recognized his tarpaulin jacket (the kind that all men in Tiksi wore in Soviet times), his wild grey curls and calm blue eyes with a note of sadness. The walls of the station still wore wallpaper from the 1960s, a portrait of Yuri Gagarin cut out from newspaper was hanging above the desk filled with old radios, Morse keys and paddles. That day I spent only two hours at the station before I had to return to the ship. During the short conversation with Slava I felt that I understood him as if we had known each other for ages. I knew that I had to come back.

Arbugaeva A Home for Science, Social Studies of Science 46(6)

I returned to Hodovarikha in the winter of 2013. Before going, I sent telegrams to the station, but I received no answer. The station is completely isolated and I had to hire a helicopter to get there.1 I was flying above frozen tundra, keeping my fingers crossed for Slava to be there. The helicopter landed near the old lighthouse, Slava met me with a smile, greeted me quietly and helped to bring my bags and a box of oranges – I brought them for him – to the house. It seemed that he was not surprised and that it was a perfectly normal thing for me to be there.

I spent three weeks observing the simple daily life of the station. In the constant darkness of the Polar night, I felt as if time stood still, as I saw no evidence of its passing. But for Slava every hour is different. He mutters to himself: ‘… wind, North by North-West, fifteen meters per second … getting stronger …’ or ‘… the pressure is dropping, storm coming ….’ He goes to write down the data in his notebook yellowed with age, then reports it over the crackling old radio to a person he has never seen.

Slava has been living at the station for thirteen years: Before that there were other Arctic stations, and years of sailing on ships. The station is his home, where he can be left alone to observe his Arctic. He doesn’t see any reason to go back to the city, where, as he says, everybody runs around senselessly and lives in small boxes, never seeing the horizon.

1 My trip was funded as part of the 10x10 exhibition project by Leica Camera AG, dedicated to celebration of 100 years of Leica camera.

Arbugaeva A Home for Science, Social Studies of Science 46(6)

For a week I didn’t take a single photograph. I tried to understand why I was there, what force made me work so hard to find Slava. I felt a strong rejection of a classic journalistic way of capturing the place. Finally I decided to put on my magic glasses that I used to have when I was a kid. Through them I saw Slava as a weather wizard on the edge of the world, who lights up the sky with the Aurora Borealis, exchanges news with the wind, and enchants the sea ….

Arbugaeva A Home for Science, Social Studies of Science 46(6)

Evgenia Arbugaeva received Bachelor degree in art management from the International University in Moscow and studied at the International Center of Photography in Photojournalism and Documentary program in New York. She is a winner of numerous photography competitions including the Leica Oscar Barnack prize in 2013 and is a recipient of a grant from the Magnum Foundation, which supported her Tiksi project.

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