Arctic dreams: a photographer’s journey to the polar north in his father’s footsteps

As a child, St Petersburg photographer Vladimir Kolbatov would dream about travelling to the polar regions. His father, a polar researcher, was often away on expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica. Left behind, Kolbatov imagined adventuring in far-off, snow-white lands. His fascination with these regions only grew after his father passed away when he was six years old. As a way of living out his childhood dreams, and reconnecting with his father, Kolbatov has spent the last few years travelling around St Petersburg, Iceland and the Baltic Sea area for his Let's Pretend We Don't Exist series, which mixes his own images with old photos that once belonged to his father. The aim, he says, “is to create a collection of double-sided postcards" that capture the past and present of a distant, dream-like zone.