Edgelands: portraits of the Russian north

While scores of artists from the Russian provinces flock to Moscow and St Petersburg each year, photographers Fedor Telkov, 25, and Sergey Poteryaev, 27, have no plans to leave Yekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city. The pair has spent the last few years documenting the changes sweeping across Russia, in particular the people and customs that are fast becoming obsolete. In North Line, they turn their cameras on the people living in the Yamal Peninsula and the Khanty-Mansi regions where the encroachment of oil production companies is threatening their way of life. “The Mansis used to inhabit the Urals but were then forced to move. The same thing is happening today with Russians coming to their lands looking for oil, forcing them to move again,” says Poteryaev. “It’s important to catch these moments and tell their story.” North Line consists of minimalist yet expansive panoramas of the tundra interspersed with portraits of the people who inhabit the lands. “How could one not worry about the disappearance of these people’s way of life?” asks Telkov. “For me it is like a drying lake … one can still find floundering fish but very soon, only grey ground will remain.” To read the full article about Telkov and Potereyev and see more of their photography, click here.