ЗАБЕРЕГ / ZABEREG
Long-term Documentary Project
“Zabereg” is a personal photography project exploring vanishing life in the villages along the Pinega River in the Arkhangelsk region of Russia. The project spans 11 years from 2008 to 2019.
In April, 2021 a large exhibition and an art book based on the project were presented to the public.
Printed materials related to the project are now available in the Store.
The first snowfall covers a tumbledown house that once belonged to a kulak dispossessed a hundred years ago. White flakes swing over a neglected field, fly into the darkness of a cracked log hut through the broken windows, land quietly on the rotten textbooks in an abandoned village school, melt on a hacki-colored coat of a retired tractor driver.
As the last remaining residents leave their villages for good, their huts slowly, inevitably merge with the surrounding forests. The effects of human presence get replaced with the effects of human absence. Nature takes over. It took ages to build the distinctive culture and the course of life intertwined with the forests and rivers, and now we’re witnessing the making over.
The frost is doing its silent work, gradually locking the rivers, starting from the banks. A strip of land-fast ice marking the first stage of the ice formation process is called “Zabereg” in Russian.
The Book
In “Zabereg” book I’ve arranged stories from Pinega around the best pictures and monologues gathered between 2008 and 2019.
It’s more than just a photobook: you’ll find there my own impressions, first-hand stories told by the local residents, and delicate illustrations by designer Ola Netta Levitsky and artist Eugenia Shraga. The cover artwork is created by Alexander Iudashkin.
The goal of the book is to immerse you in the village life of the Pinega region and to preserve the memory of it.
More about Zabereg project
I returned to the same small villages year after year, in different seasons. I wanted to explore the changes happening in nature and in the lives of the local residents.
My first expedition in 2008 was the most colorful. I hitch-hiked from my home in St. Petersburg to the Arkhangelsk region (1400 km) in the summer with a film camera and a cheap camcorder. I didn’t know anything about Pinega then, but I answered a call from my friend who asked me to help him film interviews there.
I fell in love with the place and even more so with the people of Pinega. They were simple-hearted, kind, open and they welcomed me like an old friend although we’ve never met before.
I discovered a whole different way of living there, distinct traditions, dialect, values system, singing culture. And a very unusual history. For ages that remote region had been developing independently from the rest of Russia. It had never seen enserfment, it used to be a land of free farming. A lot of Old Believers found a shelter there. Everything changes when the Communists gained power in Russia. The movement that called itself “a revolution of workers-and-peasants” in fact damaged the farming in the North by creating collective farms and suppressing the most skillful and successful peasants (kulaks).
70 years of Soviet power turned the life in the villages upside down. The peasant were not free anymore. They were obliged to donate all their farming equipment, lands, live stock to the collective farms. They were obliged to work there without getting paid. Until 1974 they didn’t have passports which meant that they couldn’t travel or move. Effectively, they became bonded peasants.
Decades of collective farming killed initiative and deprived people of any skills required for traditional private farming. After the Soviet economy collapsed in 1991, the people couldn’t return to their pre-communism life — they had neither means nor knowledge.
As all state-owned systems collapsed, the village residents were left behind. They had no choice but to run away. Only some retired elderlies stayed, who chose to survive on their own instead of moving to a foreign new place. Now, 30 years later, the generation of those retired elderlies is almost gone, and the villages are facing complete desolation.
The decay of the region was evident every time when I revisited Pinega. I witnessed the shutdown of schools, groceries, public transportation. I visited the villages where the population shrank in the course of the project from 30-40 to 10-15 people. I attended numerous funerals of the last residents. I’ve seen old, magnificent log houses collapsing and being cut to pieces of firewood.
At the same time, during my very last expedition, I’ve met people who have found the meaning of life only after moving from Saint-Petersburg to one of those remote villages.
The most difficult in any documentary project is to bring it to a close. Life goes on, and it’s usually unclear when to stop following it with a camera.
In 2019 I was walking across the frozen Pinega river. The cold was bitter: -35 degrees Celcius. I stopped right in the middle of the river. The world was silent and empty. The white river winding between the white banks was reflecting the white sky. I felt pure happiness and harmony. That’s when I realized that I’ve arrived at the final point of my 11-years-long journey.
Video materials
Vzabol
In 2008 I’ve shot a lot of video materials with my crappy camcorder. I didn’t really intend to create a documentary film, but with time these materials were becoming more and more precious. Now, 13 years later, this amateur video clip reminds me of my first impressions of the Pinega region and of the people that are gone now.
The Exhibition
The multimedia exhibition took place in Jerusalem, Israel in 2021. It contained over 30 black and white photographs, audio and video materials. The exhibition prints are available in the online store.