Troubles abound on a Kharkiv-Vladivostok train | The Calvert Journal Shop

For the inaugural edition of The Calvert Journal Shop, we have collaborated with six artists to offer you exclusive prints, available for purchase for four months only. You can browse the shop here.

Julie Poly (real name Yulia Polyashchenko) intially built a successful career as a Ukrainian fashion photographer. Today, she merges documentary and staged photography to make sense of common Ukrainian visual tropes — especially those connected to eroticism, fashion, and novel notions of beauty. The image above is taken from her book Ukrzaliznytsia, based on her days as a trainee conductor for Ukrainian Railways. During her time working on the “Kharkiv — Vladivostok” train — a route which was considered the world’s longest passenger railway line until 2010 — the artist heard “legends of thieves who poisoned unsuspecting passengers to steal their belongings.” Poly used an isotonic sports drink to mimic the vivid colour of poison and invented a character based on these stories — a seductress called Katia Clophelin, who appears in Poly’s book with an accompanying poem written by the photographer and Elizavata Nepiyko. Read it in full below.

The Kharkiv – Vladivostok run
Will be a lesson for someone
Claiming more than a single victim
Onto the train steps Katia Clophelin

A smile, the Asiatic eyes
This isn’t her first enterprise
The latest victim will recall
Her charms, the geisha’s unique thrall

Into a carriage – she says, “I’m a student”
Nothing strange in this scene is apparent
Her fellow travelers are bootleggers
Cognac appears with haste, no one lingers

Debauched conversation arose unaided
As the caviar seller later recounted
Roses in their cheeks and on the table
The mood that descended was exceptional

It seemed that a lard merchant, Vasiliy E.
Was transformed into Japanese royalty
And the caviar seller known as Salov
Caroused with geishas in a lavish hall

The smugglers woke up just outside Ufa
Patting themselves, they found pockets bare
Katyusha was gone, she’d taken every bit
No cash, no gold, no phones, none of it

Only stockings were left to suggest she was there
And a few hazy memories of the affair

The print Kharkiv — Vladivostok is available for purchase in two sizes here. Read our past interview with Julie Poly on shooting Ukrzaliznytsia.