Photo

     I took pictures in the following way. While I was heating my camera above a small stove, the deputy was waiting outdoors. When I rushed out of the door he fulfilled some actions in a very quick way: threw a lasso, for example. I had time for making several photos & the camera’s German elastic curtain got frozen. Afterwards the “Practica” camera was hung above the stove again, steamed up, dried out & the action was repeated. I wasn’t aware of many things at the time, which seem obvious to me now. For example, I didn’t know that the film shrinked, lost contrast range, veiled after frequent temperature changes. I didn’t know that our “À-2” film became as fragile as glass in the cold. Its perforations broke during the rewind. On the whole I was a self-confident, stupid lad who didn’t realize what he was doing without a “Kodak”, without an exposure meter, without a reliable camera; while the experienced press photographers weren’t eager to give me their precious advice. It was quite difficult for them to gain proficiency too.
 

     Lassoing the deer for castration. 

     The dusk of an Arctic night lasts for two hours. I had been leading a nomad’s life with the yukagirs for three days before I realized it was time to leave.
In Moscow I managed to print a dozen of more or less decent photographs. One of them was distributed onto the centerfold. It was mounted from the photo of lassoing the deer for dinner & the photo of the moon I’d brought after my journey to Pamirs.
For this publication I reproduced that collage with the help of Photoshop which left the main idea unchanged: the photo can reproduce my impressions from that journey fairly well.