Moscow bureaucrats call the Arctic Circle The Zone of Absolute Discomfort, an icy desert dotted with dying fishing villages and specters of former concentration camps. Deep underneath the permafrost, however, are untold riches: a cache of oil and gas that could sustain Russia for decades.
Justin visited this region a dozen times to capture the conflicts among these populations, which span three centuries of Russian history. First the Nenets, the indigenous herders who roamed the tundra. The Soviet government decimated them, and scarred the once-pristine land. Today, new gas and oil exploration outposts rise next to the shell of old Soviet drill sites, making a renewed assault on the Nenets.
meanwhile, The Ghost of Stalin's labour camps haunts...
Inside mono-cities, where the entire populations depend on one (usually dying) heavy industry, mounted jet aircraft stand sentry over cities used and abused by the Soviet government, and descendants of Stalin’s prisons populate the streets.
The complex geo-politics swirling over what seemed like empty Arctic tundra fascinated Justin so much that he traveled for months in deep snow to create this work.
The Russian military granted him unprecedented access to photograph the strategic zones, international energy companies showed him their technology, and snow-truck drivers took him hitch-hiking along energy diplomacy’s coldest battle front.
International prizes attest to this work, including the Magnum Fund and Pictures of the Year International (POYi). Visa Pour L'Image, the world's premier festival for photojournalism, presented a large exhibition of this work.
Born in Hong Kong and now based in Brussels, Justin lived in Moscow for six years and speak enough Russian to find stories in Russia’s inhospitable Arctic tundra.