Border Maria Gruzdeva

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BORDER is a project supported by IdeasTap & Magnum Photos Photographic

Award. Gruzdeva is also the recipient and a winner of other competitions, including the Gabriele Basilico Biennial Award and was named as one of the 30 Under 30 in the Arts category Europe by Forbes in 2016.

BORDER

photographic study of Russia’s most remote and often undiscovered areas. Exploring the connection between the disturbance of territorial boundaries and identities, Maria Gruzdeva finds elements representative of national identity and collective memory and asks questions about physical and emotional belonging. Landscapes and people portrayed and documented in Gruzdeva’s photographs and travel diaries, become part of a unique archive, a combination of researcher’s and a photographer’s rigorous investigation. Maria Gruzdeva mostly works on long-term projects underpinned by extensive research.

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BORDER is more than merely a geographical expedition, but a comprehensive

Maria Gruzdeva BORDER a journey along the edges of Russia

BORDER

is a journey along the Russian border, the longest national border in the world, which spans over 60,000 km. This book will take you on a unique trip from the warm regions of the Caucasus to the extreme cold in the North - to the Russian temporary ice base Barneo, drifting in the Arctic Ocean in proximity to the North Pole; from Kaliningrad Oblast – an exclave of Russia, its westernmost territory, to the eastern territories at the shore of the Pacific Ocean.



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to the country where my soul sings


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ница Maria Gruzdeva

a journey along the edges of Russia



Tracing Russia’s frontier Dina Gusejnova, University of Sheffield

The Europeans suddenly seem anxious about sovereignty again. In Russia, such anxieties have always been expressed more acutely. It might be useful to arm yourself with a sense of historical perspective as you follow Maria Gruzdeva on her journey along its 60,000 km border (a rough figure which includes the maritime borders; just over 20,000 if you count the land border only). International borders promise to protect public goods, described with concepts such as sovereignty, liberty, political identity.1 Visual perceptions of political borders therefore tend to concentrate on one nation. But ideas of frontiers are also the products of long, entangled constructions which transcend nations as well as empires.

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Abkhazia

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as NATO or the Red Cross are frequently encountered on the roads. Immediately beyond the border are the resort towns of Pitsunda and Gagra. Bizarre bus stops – Soviet-era relics, the early handiwork of sculptor Zurab Tsereteli – dot the roads. Strangely marine-themed, they tend to be decorated with images of octopi, shells, whales and other sea creatures. We stopped off at a beach in Pitsunda. The sea was infinitely blue and teeming with translucent

Thursday 17 February, Sochi – Abkhazia Today I flew in to Sochi Airport and immediately set out for Abkhazia – I was due to meet my guides at the border checkpoint. Once you cross the border you immediately find yourself in another country. The Abkhazians have their own language and their own alphabet. Signs and street names tend to be trilingual (AbkhazRussian-Georgian). Vehicles marked with the insignia of foreign organisations such

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jellyfish. It being February – hardly high season – the beach was largely empty. Nonetheless, music was playing in the local café, its strains coalescing with the din of the waves. And not a soul around. There was something magical about it all. We soon arrived in the town of Sukhumi. My eye was caught by Freedom Square, and the burnt-out husk of the Council of Ministers Building – a monumental Stalinist pile that was shelled and set alight during the war of 1992-1993. Before the building stood a statue-less pedestal. Locals explained to me that, in wartime, the first damage to be inflicted on monuments is usually a “head-lopping”, after which they’re progressively destroyed until only the pedestal remains. That aside, the city is quite beautiful. You might come across a few shattered buildings, but, generally speaking, everything is clean and tidy. Crowds stroll along the sea-front and relax in the cafés. Nearby is Brekhalovka, a small square where local men – young and old, common and not – gather for games of chess and conversations about the important things: politics, life, and the fate of the world.

You could see the outlines of orchards, the fruit trees planted with an unmistakable orderliness. I began photographing one of the kolkhozes. Before the main building stood a pedestal topped with a bust. It had suffered the same fate as virtually every monument in these parts: the head was missing. The building itself was magnificent, and architecturally grandiose. Balconies, columns, arches – it had the works. Symmetrically planted palm trees flanked the grand entrance. Back in the day, a lot of love and energy must have gone into the design of these places. The interior of the building now looked like a stage set, the staircase overgrown with moss and vines hanging down from the upper floors. This degree of dereliction is largely an upshot of the Abkhaz-Georgian war of 1992-1993. Areas once home to Georgian communities now stand entirely abandoned. Incidentally, the local houses are architecturally fascinating – twostoried with external (rather than internal) staircases. The activities of everyday life are predominantly confined to the ground floor. On the first floor, meanwhile, is a hall of sorts. As locals have explained to me, this tends to be used for celebrations and wakes. On these occasions, the ground floor’s living areas are bypassed altogether, with guests or mourners making their way directly upstairs. The closer we got to Gali, the more frequently we spotted street signs in Georgian – this despite the fact that the population consists largely of Mingrelians. The Gali District is particularly deprived and volatile. Visitors tend to avoid staying overnight here and do their best to leave before nightfall. Driving into town, we passed the ruined edifice of a children’s

Friday 18 February, Gali Today we set off for the Gali District, adjoining the border with Georgia. We passed vast orange-hued fields – tobacco and tea used to be grown here – as well as abandoned kolkhozes (collective farms) that looked like they might have once been welloff. We spotted these sizable structures, perhaps communal living quarters or administrative buildings. Some were so ruined you could hardly see them from the road.

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guards, who were on their break at the time. Designed for 8-10 people, the tent is equipped with a potbelly stove, a table and a television. It was pretty hot inside – everyone was wearing white T-shirts and camouflage trousers. The guards were busy on their computers and phones but really perked up when I came in. They were curious to know what had brought me here, curious about why the topic of borders should be of interest for a young girl like myself, and why far-flung spots like this one should appeal to me. As for the guards, they’d now done around three years’ service here. They were very open, joking around with me and laughing with a sincerity that lit up their whole faces – particularly their eyes. But when I asked them, “What, do you want to go back already?”, they grew ill at ease and sullen – storm clouds darkening a clear sky – and answered that they’d not seen their families for over two years…

hospital, a pretty mosaic adorning the façade of its main building. Then there was an obelisk bearing the inscription “HouseMuseum”2 – with nothing of the kind in sight. The region is dangerous on account of its high criminality; fire-fights and bomb blasts are part of everyday life here. The military serves as a deterrent power. The border guards are based in a building used by the UN until 2009 and still painted in white and pale blue, both inside and out. All the curtains stay closed even in daytime. There’s no china in the canteen, just aluminium bowls, enamel mugs, and – amazingly – a backdrop of music from Love Story. Later, and now clad in bullet-proof vests, we proceeded by armoured vehicle to a tent outpost right on the border with Georgia. Locals don’t pay any attention to APCs – they won’t so much as look round when one drives past. You sense it’s just a habitual thing for them. The outpost is on a hill; the bridge-spanned river below serves as the border between Abkhazia and Georgia. All day long, a horsedrawn cart trundles back and forth across the bridge, transporting letters and parcels. It’s a very simple set-up. A Georgian flag is clearly visible on the other bank. I went into one of the tents to see the border

1 Abkhazia is a partially recognised state on the east coast of the Black Sea. It has been a self-declared republic since the war with Georgia in 1992-1993. Recognised as an integral part of Georgia by the UN Security Council, it is regarded as an independent state by Russia and three other countries. 2 House-museum – a house, later turned into a museum of an outstanding individual who used to live there.

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North pole Barneo

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15 April, Moscow – Svalbard We flew out to Svalbard from Sheremetyevo Airport in the early morning of April 15, with a four-and-a-half-hour journey ahead of us. Svalbard is an archipelago in the North Arctic Ocean, constitu ailitarized zone encompasses the entire archipelago and its coastal waters. Though Svalbard is under the jurisdiction of Norway, a significant role in the economic and administrative life of the archipelago is played by Russia. Spitsbergen is home to the Russian

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settlement of Barentsburg as well as several abandoned villages. Norwegian and Russian are both official languages. Svalbard is also where you’ll find the planet’s global seed vault. This so-called “Noah’s Food Ark” holds frozen seeds from many global plant species, and is designed to keep them safe from noxious external stimuli or circumstances – like natural disasters or even a nuclear war. We landed to overcast skies. Everything



was enveloped in a strange grey haze. I was shooting on colour film but it seemed that any photographs I took would come out black and white. In such weather conditions – and they’re hardly a rarity in these parts – planes often crash into the cliffs due to poor visibility. It didn’t feel at all cold, which was odd, given the sheer quantity of snow and ice around. It was around +8C and humid. We spent a few hours on Svalbard before heading off to Barneo. Our group had swelled now, and we were in a different plane – an AN-74, a timeworn aircraft designed to transport people and cargo in Arctic conditions. Other than a handful of passenger seats up front, the fuselage was entirely given over to cargo, which meant some people were relegated to the floor. Above the navigator’s seat, on your immediate right as you enter the plane, hung an icon of Our Lady of Kazan. Sooner or later, it is said, the crews of these planes all bite the dust on landing. Pilots are very superstitious folk and don’t like being photographed pre-flight. 16 April, Svalbard – Barneo Landing on Barneo, the temperature difference is instantly apparent: you realise straight away that you’re in the direct vicinity of the North Pole. When you exit the plane you’re immediately blasted with dry, icy air. Your hair, your eyelashes, the fur lining of your hood – it all freezes up. I had to wear two pairs of gloves, one over the other, so my hands wouldn’t freeze. Barneo is a Russian floating ice base established annually on a suitable ice floe in approximately the same location, and at around the same time of year (it’s operational over a two-month period), in close proximity to the North Pole. Locating a suitable ice floe tends to present quite a challenge: the floe mustn’t split or drift off, and it has to be big enough to

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accommodate an AN-74. The base is operated by experienced polar explorers. Shooting was difficult: the grease lubricating the focus ring of my Hasselblad lens had frozen, and I could barely rotate it. There was nothing around me but tents, snow and ice. By that point we’d been en route for some twelve hours. I was gripped by the unsettling feeling that time itself was no more. Perpetual light: no alternation of night and day. Time seemed to have vanished, had ceased to exist as a unit of measurement. People in camp don’t go to bed or wake up at any particular hour. There’s nothing but the unfurling of life: work – eat – sleep – repeat. Everyone keeps their own divergent hours of waking and sleeping. For time simply doesn’t exist. Sense of time and space faltering, losing its dominion. Enveloped by solid white: white snowy “floor” beneath you, white wall of air before you. After having a quick bite to eat in camp and warming ourselves up a little, our group climbed into several MI-8 helicopters for the half-hour flight to the point of the Pole. These were military helicopters, ones where you sit on benches along the walls. Looking most content, Artur Nikolayevich Chilingarov1 was showing off his bona fide polar gear. He sported black leather trousers with zippers down the sides. I asked what these were for. Shooting me a faintly conspiratorial glance, he opened the zip a tad at the ankle… to reveal a natural fur lining. He also showed us his mittens – handsome and fluffy, they too were made of natural fur. You sensed that, as an experienced polar expeditioner, he was enjoying every single moment of this. A spark had been kindled inside him. It was as if he was drawing strength directly from the air. He even looked younger. You could see the hint of a smile, all soft and tranquil, through his beard. It’s


exactly that sort of smile, I think, that plays on the faces of the happy and contented. We were flying very low – so low you could see individual floes, and the huge cracks that lined them. It felt a little uneasy. On arrival at the North Pole, we planted flags in the ground, had a few pictures taken and drank some champagne. The champagne froze right in our flutes – by the time the first bubbles had

risen to the surface it was already freezing up. Fast forward another couple of minutes and it was just ice in a glass. I inquired as to the purpose of our expedition. “Being here,” came the answer. 1 Artur Chilingarov – famous polar explorer, awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union and later Hero of the Russian Federation.


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Altai Krai & Altai Republic

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