Kaliningrad region is the enclave of Russia, ex-territory of East Prussia (Germany) before 1946. All pictures were taken by me in August 2016. Film — ADOX Color Implosion 100, camera — Olympus XA2.
Teriberka, Murmansk reg., Russia
August 2016
Film — ADOX Color Implosion 100
Camera — Olympus XA2
Some new pictures from my lovely film ADOX Color Implosion. Camera — Olympus XA2. All photos were taken in Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and Ryazan, Russia. May 2016.
Some scans from Fujicolor Pro 160C captured 2-3 January 2016 in the Moscow region. Unfortunately, this film is no longer available.
At 2:00 am yesterday, before going to bed, I’ve looked out the window and… instead of going to bed, have loaded into the camera roll of Ilford HP5+ film, got dressed and went out into the street. December 17, 2015, Moscow, Russia.
As Iwas preparing for the “Retro Color. Technologies and art” lecture, I stumbled across a remarkable branch where people put up scans of old color film from home archives. Some pictures are so heart-warming, I couldn’t resist getting a selection to wax nostalgic about. Unfortunately, I don’t have old color film of my own, although even back then I took, developed and even printed images in color. Here you get mostly ORWO from the German Democratic Republic, incredibly popular in the USSr in the 70s and 80s. There was actually very little alternative for color, except SVEMA and sometimes KODAK, if you could get it. Here I was more interested in color than mementos, but it’s still an impressive selection.
“White Balance” serie
Malozemelskaya & Bolshezemelskaya Tundra
Nenets Autonomous District, Russia
(c) Pavel Kosenko, 2013-2015
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A semi-deserted locality in Murmansk Oblast on the shores of the Barents Sea. Now there is not even a road leading to it, while some 30–40 years back it used to host the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute. I’ve been there in 2009, with a car from Moscow. It took me 2 days for the first 2000 km, and 6 more hours on an off-roader across tundra for the last 30 km. Now, 5 years past, I recalled that trip in relation to the new Russian Oscar–nominated movie “Leviathan” that was shot on location in those exact places.
While preparing for the trips to the Arctic Circle I was thinking a great deal about what kind of photo equipment to take with me. On the one hand, I wanted to take as little cameras and lenses as possible because it’s quite difficult to carry several cameras in severe climatic conditions, let alone changing the lenses which is practically impossible. On the other hand, travelling with only one camera, even if it is expeditionary one, is also risky – what if it gets broken or, for instance, all the batteries, including spare ones, go flat?
In the end, mostly by intuition, I chose two cameras: ‘big’ Canon 1D X (lens 24-70 f/2.8L) and ‘small’ Fujifilm X-Pro1 (lens Fujifilm XF 18 mm f/2 R X-Mount). I was tempted to take a film camera as well, just in case, but I decided to confine myself to the excessive reserve of power: I took 2 batteries for the big camera and 5 for the small one. Moreover I had an iPhone but it turned out absolutely useless at 53°C because 100% of battery had drained in 2 minutes.
