Yamal

On the Yamal Peninsula in the Russian Arctic, Nenets herders move across the tundra with their reindeer, carrying the materials of camp on sledges. At night, the conical forms of the chums stand beneath the northern lights; by day, people and animals emerge against an immense field of snow. The photographs follow this life through its distinct moments of movement, work and rest.

The scale of the herds is matched by the small, physical details of living in the cold: a face rimmed with frost, hands among the antlers, a dog moving between the animals. In one image, a herder and a few reindeer stand against the last light of the horizon; elsewhere, the herd fills the frame until individual animals become part of a shifting pattern. These changes in distance bring the viewer between the experience of a person within the herd and the vastness of the landscape.

For the Nenets, reindeer herding is bound to seasonal movement across the peninsula and to the knowledge required to travel with the herd. The series brings this mobile way of life into view without reducing it to either a romantic image of the Arctic or a record of hardship. It attends instead to the relationships among people, animals, camp and land that make life on the tundra possible.