Turek's photos certainly capture the coldness of Siberia, the area covers about sixty percent of Russia and so big it has three climate zones, all with very short summers. I was surprised that out of ninety photos in the book there are only two that show the landscape untouched by humans but the book is really about how the hardy locals survive in this harsh country.
Most of the exterior shots show plenty of snow with everyone well wrapped up against the cold. The interiors reveal a much more interesting view of how Russians live, either it seems in high rise apartment blocks or rather miserable housing with a general feel of untidiness and neglect. Is this a throwback to the days of the Soviet Union when the state controlled everything or because the cold reduces activity?
The photos are presented in the classic photobook format of one picture on each right-hand page and just the Plate number on the left. There is a serious flaw with the book though: absolutely no information about any of these images and some of them are intriguing enough for me to ask..."what's going on here?" Plate forty-one shows a person with an umbrella walking up some steps on the outside of a building shaped like a huge abstract head, maybe it's a house! Plate forty-six reveals a weird looking small submarine with portholes and it seems permanently fixed at the waters edge. Plate fifty-seven has four men laying on the ice, each looking down into a small hole and each of them holding what looks like a drinking straw, in the background is the snowmobile they arrived in.
No dates, names of places and no captions which would add extra credence to so many of these interesting photos. A serious omission in my view.
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